Скачать или смотреть Ghazel in conversation with Tania Bruguera | Art for the Not Yet

Night 7, May 24th
Tania Bruguera (Cuban, 1968) is an internationally renowned contemporary artist and activist. Her performances and social interventions focus on political power dynamics and their implications for social justice. Her art pushes boundaries by exploring how art can intersect with everyday political realities, aiming to empower individuals to become active citizens rather than passive spectators.
Bruguera introduced groundbreaking concepts like Arte Útil, Political Timing-Specific Art, Art For The Not Yet, and Est-ética. Through long-term projects like Cátedra Arte de Conducta, Immigrant Movement International, and Institute for Artivism Hannah Arendt (INSTAR), she has challenged institutional norms and reshaped collective memory, education, and politics. Tania Bruguera’s multifaceted contributions to the intersection of art and activism have left an indelible mark on the global cultural landscape.

Ghazel was born in 1966 in Tehran.
Ghazel received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. from L’Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Nîmes (France). She also received a B.A. in Film Studies from Paul Valéry University in Montpellier.
In her work, Ghazel has obsessively questioned contemporary migrations, belonging, hybridity, social issues and the effects of War. Her work is always directly inspired by her multiple imperfect identities and the social work that she has been doing since the mid 90s with delinquent youngsters, street children, migrants and asylum seekers. She believes that Art can only be a strategy of resistance.
She has participated in many international biennials, including the 50th International Exhibition Venice Biennial (Clandestini) in 2003, the 8th Havana Biennial (El Arte con la vida) in 2003, the 3rd Tirana Biennial (Sweet Taboos, Episode 2: To lose without being a Loser) in 2005, the 15th Biennale of Sydney (Zones of Contact) in 2006, the 7th Sharjah Biennial (Belonging) in 2005, the XIV Woman Biennial in Ferrara ( Veiled Memoirs: Contemporary Art from Iran) in 2010 and the 13th Havanna Biennial (Construction of the Possible) in 2019.

Summit Two, 2024
Chthonic Realism: Summoning Ghosts and Monsters

Reality is Chthonic in the sense that it is not entirely revealed in any relations. For a realist, the world is not only the world-for-us, reduced to human access, but rather there is always a surplus. Accordingly, Chthonic Realism is a term that attempts to take into account the existence of the world-in-itself, apart from any relation, and, certainly, the world-without-us, the world of Inhumans, as opposed to the world-for-us, a world merely reduced to human correlation.* The term Chthonic also brings to mind the word Cthulhu. In various cultural and mythological contexts, “chthonic” is often used to describe deities, spirits, or forces that are related to the underworld, or the afterlife. Summoned from a dimension outside of time and space beyond the limits of human understanding, Cthulhu – a tentacular Lovecraftian cosmic monster – has appeared in many different texts playing different roles from an otherworldly monster in horror novels to a metonymic figure for speculative and metaphysical in contemporary philosophy. This creature is an inhuman entity coming from the darkness of reality – somewhere beyond human finitude – that threatens our world and shakes the pillars of human understanding.Chthonic Realism: Summoning Ghosts and Monsters explores the concepts of horror, speculation, the unknown, and the future. How things of the past can teach humans to gain a better understanding of reality. What happens when contemporary artists summon the ghosts of antiquity or monsters beyond the boundaries of time and space? And how things of the past can beckon us through the obscurity of the unknowable and towards a multitude of Futures?