Скачать или смотреть Monument of Arrival and Return, 2016 Basir Mahmoud

Monument of Arrival and Return, 2016
video installation, color, sound, 9 min., 36 sec.
acquired in 2019
 
Every now and then an art work knocks me off my feet. The last few, in reverse order, Isaac Julien at the Sharjah Biennale with Once Again ... (Statues Never Die), Wael Shawky’s recent installation at the Jeddah Islamic Biennale, Alia Farid’s film on the Fishermen Norouz on the Iranian island of Qeshm at Melly Rotterdam and before at the Sharjah Biennale, O Peixe (The Fish) by Jonathas de Andrade first in Sharjah and then at FOAM Amsterdam, Maja Helander in Topophobia at the Kiasma museum Helsinki and Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors at the Kiasma Helsinki and later along with A Lot of Sorrow at De Pont Tilburg. Here is another one.
 
“For Monument of Arrival and Return, Basir Mahmood hired a local production company in his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan to film a group of railway porters--clad in their bright orange uniforms as they interact with the artist's personal belongings. Working remotely from his studio in Amsterdam, Mahmood communicated a set of instructions to the participants while also allowing space for improvisation.
Although increased mobility and rapid communication have facilitated
Mahmood's experimentation with creating art from a distance, the porters' work has barely changed in the last hundred years. Captured in varying states of stillness and flux, they represent a class of workers who remain either in wait or in motion, while never actually going anywhere themselves. Mahmood highlights the contrast between the porters' onscreen labor and the viewer's relative comfort by inviting visitors to lounge on couch in the exhibition space.”