YARAT Contemporary Art Space is pleased to announce the exhibition “Unthought Known” with works by YARAT residents Hiba Farhat (USA/Lebanon), Clara Jo (USA/ Germany) and Ehtiram Jabi (Azerbaijan).

The term “Unthought Known” refers to a psychological concept of knowledge that the individual person is not actively aware of. The “unthought” stands for early-learned schemata of interpreting the objective world; it can be shaped by early experiences, traumas or dreams that unconsciously determine our perception and actions. In the exhibition the works approach subjects that deconstruct repetitive structures such as memory, history, language questioning concepts of perception, knowledge and reality.

Hiba Farhat’s work “Lobster Paradise” builds on one particular Baku dream. While on a three-hour flight from Dubai to Baku, Ibrahim Ibrahimov closed his eyes and had a dream in which he envisioned a future city off the coast of Baku manifested in the form of a gigantic lobster.  ‘Lobster Paradise’ recreates this dream to then subvert it within the present moment of a post-oil crash Azerbaijan. The work places side by side individually familiar but unrelated objects that start to radiate oddness. Through a conjunction of items not normally associated with each other, something both playful and menacing occurs. ‘Lobster Paradise’ elides an allegorical reading, the emotions it tries to stir and the fallacies it attacks are too real. It draws out an illogical world to its most logical ends.

Clara Jo’s short film excavates the layers of history embedded within various mnemonic and architectural landscapes in and around Baku.  Behind these ancient and modern facades, narratives are derived and accumulated via the natural and artificial materials that make up the city.  Contrasting grand architectural gestures against the prosaic, the film interrogates how the modern production of spaces preserves identity, yet also has the capacity to generate cultural amnesia.

Ehtiram Jabi’s project “Polio” is autobiographical and talks about his childhood memories dominated by dirty hospital rooms, doctors, painful treatments and despair. Compared to other patients his sickness was a mild form, but he still felt a deep psychological impact, deprivations and memories are accompanying him everyday of his life. The installation consists of a wooden construction with photographs of the “Polio” series inside that formally relates to the hospital corridors but also to the bonds of the trauma. The second room contains real objects hanging on a wall representing his life outside the hospital, but are still associated to restrains due to is illness. Coming from photography the artists explores the first time different medias to reflect on the medium of photography and notions of fragility, ephemerality and reality. 

Biographies 

Clara Jo (Berlin) is a graduate of Bard College and the Institut für Raumexperimente / UdK Berlin.  Her recent film and sculptural installations work in conversation with sites implicated in revisionist histories.  She has exhibited and screened her work at the Royal Academy of Arts (London), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof, Neue Nationalgalerie, Dahlem Museums, Museum for Photography), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), Akademie der Künste (Berlin), and the Alliance Ethio-Française d’Addis-Abeba, Ethiopia. 

Hiba Farhat is an artist from Lebanon and Ghana who makes images, objects, and situations. Hiba holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The often-opaque fractured themes in Hiba’s works have in common her fascination with the border between the political and the existential, the imagined and the real. The obsolescence and the varied relationship between images and the objects they supposedly document/represent is a point of departure in her work. Her videos particularly involve sourcing and collecting a wide range of imagery and consequently intervening to recreate meaning and situations through constructed/deconstructed cultural, social, historical and political contexts.

Ehtiram Jabi, 1996, was born in Baku. Ehtiram’s passion in photo journalism enabled him to partner with Reuters, ANN, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service where some of his works were published. Ehtiram’s photo series called “On the top”, “White swan”, “Veterans” were released in leading local portals. Participation in 2014 in Yarat Summer School with Magnum Photography (Thomaz Dworzak, Chien-Chi Chang) and photographer David Montgomery played a major role in his work. In 2015 during the exhibition “Friendship of Peoples” in Moscow was invited to speak at a creative meeting, and in the same year received a prize from the Union of Photographers of Azerbaijan Award “Hope”. In 2017, he finished work on his first full-fledged project “Polio”. His works were displayed in group exhibitions in Russia, Georgia. Currently based in Baku and working on different personal photo projects.

YARAT RESIDENCY PROGRAM 

YARAT Contemporary Art Space invites artists to apply for the residency programme of end every year (september). The programme is divided into three periods (January–April, April-July, September-December) and grants selected artists an opportunity to live and work in Baku for up to three months. Each period hosts two international and two local residents.

YARAT Residency Programme is open for artists who are engaged in open, research-based practice across disciplines and show an interest in discovering the Caucasus region. The programme engages residents in discussions with fellow artists and international arts professionals, as well as travel around Azerbaijan. Artworks resulting from the residence are exhibited at the ARTIM Project Space, Baku. YARAT Residency programme is predominantly conducted in English.

Opening Date: 25^th of April 2018, 7 pm

Address: ARTIM Project Space Old City (Icherisheher) Boyuk Gala Street 30, 001A 

Admission is free

Exhibition dates: 25^th of April – 11th of May

Working hours:  Tuesday – Sunday, 12 pm – 8 pm

For more information: +994125051414