Category: group exhibitions

The PLAYroom presents a group exhibition “U Bent Hier”[You Are Here] curated by Jeroen van Paassen featuring artworks by:

A+B
Ai Weiwei
Banksy
Eca Eps
Shepard Fairey
Denise Fréchet
Rahman Hak-Hagir
Ottmar Hörl
Maria Jimena Herrera
Monica Rathoff-Troll
Jave Yoshimoto

1 – 24 February 2019, Zaandam, NL

Led by artist-curator Pippa Koszerek, the 2018 MKH Biennale in Halberstadt is themed around the Klimawechsel [changing climate], bringing together artists who look at changing systems – social, financial and architectural – and artists whose work seeks to directly create and disrupt change through invention with alternative mechanisms. For its third edition, the Monat Kunst Halberstadt Biennale will look through the experiments of artists at the changing current social, political, cultural, environmental and historical climate to examine how artists comprehend, influence and make change in the world.

Eca Eps’ intervention at the MKH Biennale will feature live performance, video and installation comprising four works:

Water Work: A durational performance film staged at the National Museum Lagos, Nigeria which utilised 50,000 litres of water reflecting on access to water as a marker for survival. In the vein of other performances, the national youth service uniform is adopted to simultaneously look at the role of the artist as citizen and art as a tool for civic participation.

Unbuilding: This live installation uses frozen saltwater with traces of red earth evoking passage through the Sahara and the Mediterranean to create a collapsing wall recognising the shifting tendency towards closed societies sparked by the influx of migration and the subsequent responses.

Pure Water: Drinking water packaged as emergency water supply on rescue crafts (also sold commercially in Nigeria as ‘pure water’ for consumption on the go) serves a dual function as it becomes weaponised as water bombs when in motion during the interconnected performance of ‘From Chibok to Calais’ in the exhibition.

From Chibok to Calais: This performance previously staged at ORT Gallery combines a vocal map reading exercise intercut by spontaneous audience participation all of which is consumed by the presence of an agitated watch dog.  Using space, sound, speech and text, this performance creates an experience that provides a glimpse into the uncertainty, chaos and distress brought on by displacement.

Exhibiting artists at MKH Biennale include Alexander Kluge, Aram Bartholl, Aerocene Foundation (Museo Aero Solar), Georgia Brown, Jasmina Cibic, Rebecca Chesney, Don’t Follow The Wind, Transformation Design, Sarah Lehn, Alistair Mcclymont, Sogol Mabadi, Doireann Ni Ghrioghair, and Sven Wiesner.

Klimawechsel / Climates of Change will open on 31st August and run until 29th September 2018.
See exhibition venues.

Why We Serve is a research process examining women’s service to the state in conflict contexts, particularly in relation to religiously motivated wars. Often framed as casualties in war, women have also defied assumed narratives and in some instances, have taken on combative roles with Kurdish women fighters immediately coming to mind – but beyond counter-insurgencies such as in the Rojava revolution, women also assume combat as a civic duty.

The process is conducted through performativity (walking in uniform, mapping, drawing, audio/discussion) Having explored the notion of labour in my practice, I have often staged performances in my National Youth Service Corps uniform alluding to questions around civil participation in everyday life. Through my time in Israel, my uniform will be a marker for the work as it gradually accumulates the shared stories and maps of walks.

By cross-referencing the political contexts of Nigeria and Israel, the militarised aesthetics evident on the streets in both states establishes a degree of commonality, but the stark contrast in relation to gender and conflict provides a more challenging exchange. In the former, women have been framed as casualties of the Boko Haram insurgency with few serving in the Nigerian army, while the reverse is true in Israel, with many staying on beyond conscription. The territorial struggle that defines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also echoed in the drive for militants to seize the north of Nigeria.

Why We Serve is undertaken as part of Art Cube Artists’ Studios international annual residency programme funded by the Jerusalem Foundation.

On 5th July 2018, I will be taking part in a live event marathon at Art Cube Artists’ Studios, creating a performance based on my research project Why We Serve. I will also be in conversation with artistic director Maayan Sheleff discussing women’s service in a talk titled ‘Agents or Servants: On the Female Civic Body’

Photo by Tal Kronkop

Artist-curator Folakunle Oshun and an international curatorial team including Ayo Akinwande, Amira Paree, Sola Akintunde, Kelvin Hazel, Kwasi Ohene-Aye, Aminat Lawal Agoro and Michael Enejiso; conceived the inaugural Lagos Biennial around survival. Themed ‘Living On the Edge’, the exhibition brought together Nigerian and international artists to re-think and re-imagine Lagos and produce site-specific and contextual work that interrogates their experiences in and around crisis situations.

Participating artists include Jelili Atiku, Rahima Gambo, Lena Athanasopoulou, Sam Hopkins and David Lale, Saba Zavarei, David Palacios, Arrigo Reuss, Lamis Haggag, Dunja Herzog, Jess Atieno, Abdulrazaq Awofeso, Rita GT, Niyi Olagunju, Phoebe Boswell, Kainebi Osahenye, Adeola Olagunju, Ranjeeta Kumari, Yara Mekawei, Eca Eps, Obuh Christopher Nelson, Amina Zoubir, Olivia Jasinski, Tito Aderemi-Ibitola, Kathleen Hearn, Jerry Buhari, Youngjoo Yoo, Poku Chereme, Maie Okafor, Amol Pati, Tori Wrånes, Taiye Idahor, Januario Jano, Ro Caminal, Ala Kheir, Sol Prado, Wura Natasha-Ogunji, Sébastien Mazauri, Fati Abubakar, Delio Jasse, Abraham Oghobase, Kris Russo, Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel, Silas Mensah, Mawuenya Amudzi and Ayo Akinwande.

The biennial is organised by the Akete Art Foundation in partnership with Legacy 1995

Eca Eps: Government Reserved Area (GRA) installation at the 2017 Lagos Biennial examined the increasing privatisation of public space and the developing dialogue on mapping and toponymy as part of a considered drive to redefine national identity post-independence.

London open studio weekend at SFSA / Thamesside Studios
20th and 21st May 2017
Limited opening times. Email the studio for more info
studio @ ecaeps.com

The Ibero-American Utopias exhibition is at the Embassy of Brazil, London 14 – 16 Cockspur Street, SW1Y 5BL from 16th November to 8th December 2017. Private view: 15th November 6.30pm

“For some time, we have wanted to put on a major event to commemorate the relaunch of our activities, as well as to celebrate the rich cultural diversity of the countries that we represent. Fortuitously, our plans thereby coincided with the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’, so we thought we would explore how More’s fictional account of an ideal world could be said to speak to the Ibero-American situation – therefore, this year’s theme will be ‘Ibero-American Utopias’. This also speaks to our interest in fostering cultural interchange, and in stimulating new interactions between the Ibero-American and British worlds. In this case, we are linking a key text of the UK’s Renaissance intellectual history to current trends in contemporary art, and revisiting and investing with new significance the story of the relationship between these two spheres.

So, how about the link?  If you stop to think about how Spanish and Portuguese explorers first fantasized about the Americas as a kind of ‘new Eden’; how Latin American thinkers have sought to forge their own unblemished ‘native’ consciousness; about Don Quixote and his impossible dream; or Pablo Neruda’s hymns to the ideal of Pan-American unity; or Mário de Andrade’s irreverent utopian novel Macunaíma, his rhapsodic amalgamation of brazilianness, – you will see that the intellectual and art histories of Ibero-American countries are indeed a rich tapestry of utopian dreams and contestations. And it isn’t just Ibero-American artists who have been inspired by the myth of El Dorado. You need look no further than Voltaire’s Candide for an example of how Latin America, Spain and Portugal have long served as beacons of utopianism to writers and artists from beyond their borders.”

– Hayle Gadelha, Cultural Attaché, Embassy of Brazil

A presentation and performative lecture at Scarred, Shifting & Sacred Sites: Art, Advocacy & Performance at Autograph ABP, London

“Investigating the ways performative practices challenge prejudice, fear and violence towards the body in society.”

“This event takes Aida Silvestri’s Unsterile Clinic, an exhibition to raise awareness of the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), as a cue to reflect on the gendered, cultural body as a site of struggle, recuperation, and possible transformations. Performers’ responses will address the body as a living map of physical and emotional scars, a site for confronting institutional boundaries as well as the ground for individual and collective resistance.”

Book tickets

Something Human presents: Oreet Ashery, Raju Rage, Helena Walsh & Eca Eps

Scarred, Shifting & Sacred Sites: Art, Advocacy & Performance at Autograph APB, London

During the Open Studio weekend at my studio in the Second Floor Studio Art complex, I will be showing new work and films from my archive. Enquiries: studio @ ecaeps .com