Rheim Alkadhi
Rheim Alkadhi is a visual artist based in Berlin who works internationally. Alkadhi operates under contemporary conditions in alternating geographical contexts, circumscribed by objects, images, and texts, via digital media, interactions in public space, and intimate person-to-person contact. Their work is described as: "With multiple migratory belongings/trajectories in regions of imposed geopolitical conflict, the perception of authoritarian, imperial, colonial dominance is magnified in everyday life. Thus, the work registers a nonconforming emancipatory feminist existence under such planetary conditions, using mediums of language, artifacts of material reality, and living interactions."
Biography
Rheim Alkadhi lived first in Benghazi, Libya, and then between Baghdad and New England; raised by an American mother and an Iraqi father and attended public school in Iraq until the family returned to the United States at the start of the Iran–Iraq War.Selected projects
- 2009: residency at Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, gathering material for the limited edition artist book "Destroyed in Baghdad / Repaired in Cairo: A Viewer's Manual to a Temporary Art Practice in the Auto Mechanics District". In 2009, the limited edition artist book "Post Cards From the Clandestine Troupe" was printed.
- 2010: one month in Itaewon, Seoul with the artist-run space DoBaeBacSa; also artist in residence at PØST in Los Angeles.
- 2011: artist in residence at Dar al Ma'mun in Tassoultante and then independent of institutional assistance in the village of Tahannaout, Al Haouz Province.
- 2012: artist in residence at Darat al Funun in Amman via the initiative of Rijin Sahakian and Sada for Contemporary Iraqi Art.
- 2012: as a temporary member of a household of women in the West Bank village of Jamma'in in Palestine, the project "Collective Knotting Together of Hairs" was developed with the local Women's Association, with Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah, and with Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem.
- 2014: developed the project "Communications From the Field of Contact " during a residency at the Sharjah Art Foundation.
- 2015 and 2016: created live presentations included "Eye Theatre Closes Its Doors and Opens Them Again", commissioned for the Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia, and "Köln Phantasm" developed and performed while a fellow in visual art at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.
- 2016: "Night Taxi", a multimedia suite of documents outlined milliseconds leading up to the crossing of an arbitrary geographical border.
- 2017: "Hairs of the Oppressed" was featured at once resolved and ongoing; a sculpture concept accompanied by the text "Script for Eleven Hairs" at Autonomes Cultur Centrum, Weimar. Rotating authorial concept acknowledges the collaborative emancipatory politics/method of Theatre of the Oppressed, on which this piece is based.
- 2018: participation in the experimental walking art school Spring Sessions across Jordan; later that year, a public staging at the migrant-run OBI market in Berlin, based on conversations and ongoing relationships initiated in that context. Displayed objects included: mock-up of geo-political extraction field; large block of Styrofoam for flotation; seven shoe fragments collected along migration routes; refugee housing in Europe for a family of eight; patterned blanket; eye of a needle.
- 2019: travel to various provinces of Iraq resulted in many of the elements featured in the ongoing framework and exhibition "Majnoon Field".
- 2020: Toward the Inalienable Right of the Dispossessed in the exhibition Beyond Walls at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
- 2021: Arrival Points screening and exhibition at Haus der Statistik, Berlin
- 2022: Devastation on Your Beautiful Eyes exhibition at Beirut Art Center; Call for Immediate Reparations From the Waves of Our Mass Migration installation at the Trienniale Kleinplastik Fellbach; Speak, Then, Material Witness, in the Medium of Rebellion exhibition as teaching structure at Kunstverein Uelzen
Fellowships and Honors
- 2010: Rheim Alkadhi received a grant from Art Matters and the Center for Cultural Innovation.; in 2009, awarded a Mid-Career Artist Fellowship from the California Community Foundation; in 2008, awarded a grant from the Arab Fund for Art and Culture; in 1990, received an award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and from 1990 to 1994 the Musicfest award for young artists.
- 2017: Mophradat
- 2017: Rockefeller Bellagio
- 2019: Berlin Senat Research Stipend
- 2019: AFAC
- 2020/2021: Künstlerische Forschung Berlin
- 2020: Guggenheim Foundation
- 2021: Art Matters
- 2021: Stiftung Kunstfonds
Selected exhibitions
When Artists Say We – Artists Space, New York – March 8 – April 29, 2006 Draw a Line and Follow It - Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions – June 21 through August 20, 2006Eternal Flame: Imagining a Future at the End of the World - Redcat, Los Angeles – February 15 through April 8, 2007System Error: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning - Palazzo delle Papesse, Sienna – February 3 through May 6, 2007OÙ? Scènes du Sud - Carré d'Art, Nîmes – June 13 through September 21, 2008 Veronica – Nichols Gallery, Pitzer Art Galleries – September 24 through December 11, 2009 Exhibition for Adults and Children - Dobaebacsa, Seoul – April 1 through 26, 2010 What's Become of Us? - PØST, Los Angeles – November 2010The Page: An Interactive Exhibition of Artist Books - Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University12th Cairo Biennial – Opera House, Cairo – December 12, 2010 through February 12, 2011Communitas. Among Others - Camera Austria, Graz – September 25, 2011 through January 1, 2012 Lucky Today - Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art Hesaplașma | Aftermath – Akbank Sanat, Istanbul – March 14 through May 17, 2012 Documenta And and and Platform, 2012Gestures in Time/The Jerusalem Show - West Bank and Jerusalem – November 1 through 15, 2012Here Is My Life Which I Devote to Learning About You – Darat al Funun, Amman – May 4 through 31, 2013 Alwan338 / Foundations – Al Riwaq Art Space, Adliya, Bahrain – March 3 through April 19, 2014Here and Elsewhere – New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City – July 16 through September 28, 2014 12th Sharjah Biennial: The Past, the Present, the Possible - Sharjah Art Foundation – March 5 through June 5, 2015Im Dickicht der Haare / ''Entangled in Hair – Grimmwelt Museum, Kassel – October 9, 2015 through une 5, 2016 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art – Brisbane – November 21, 2015 through April 10, 2016 Sites of Return – Beit Michael Sufan, Ramallah / Qalandiya International – October 10 through 31, 2016 Why Not Ask Again? – Power Station of Art – November 11, 2016 through March 12, 2017 True Lies - Autonomes Cultur Centrum, Weimar – February 10 through May 7, 2017IM_MOBILITIES - Galerie KUB, Leipzig – June 10 through June 30, 2017 Material Communities - OBI Parkplatz, Berlin – October 7, 2018 Rheim Alkadhi: Majnoon Field'' – Temporary Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Art, Cologne – August 30 through December 15, 2019Live presentations
Eye Theater Closes Its Doors and Opens Them Again – presented at Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Köln Phantasm – produced and performed at Akademie Schloss Solitude ; performed at Kunstgebäude Stuttgart Mosul Vapor – performed at Kunstgebäude Stuttgart View Through the Eye of a Needle - performed in Wadi Rum as part of Spring Sessions Our Current Dwelling Is Fire – produced at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center; performed at March Meeting, Sharjah ; and Videonale Scope7, CologneOnline projects
' – 'micro literature' based on found images from concurrent wars in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, 2006- comprising digital and narrative gendered constructions, mostly from found online material, 2007–2010
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