K60: GCC, GUAN XIAO, SLAVS AND TATARS, ANNA UDDENBERG

With ‘Gestures’ GCC further investigated the increasingly pervasive trend of Positive Energy gaining momentum in the Gulf region and how these lifestyle attitudes are appropriated, employed, and transformed as part of a greater political mechanism. In continuation of this, the works ‘Mahd’ (مهد, cradle in Arabic) turn to 'Heritage engineering’ as a prevalent practice in the Gulf that is used to prioritize certain aspects of culture to create and maintain a prevailing narrative of positivism. To this end, ‘positive energy movements’ have become co-opted by governments in the region; new ministerial positions like the UAE’s Ministry of Happiness are created, and the emerging life coaches and Feng Shui consultants are employed by the hereditary leaders. In Belief in the Power of Believe, the artists reference antiquity with a set of monumental sculptural reliefs based on 3D renderings of stills taken from YouTube videos and online images of regional practitioners promoting the positive energy movement as state policy. Referring to the erasure and creation of cultural myths, these reliefs become contemporary cultural artifacts: narratives of the present and the politics of cultural extinction and creation.

Listen to Belief in The Power of Believe

The Documentary  of Agriculture: Gathering, addresses the state of contemporary industrial production in relation to the so-called natural world. According to Guan Xiao, agriculture or farming is similar to science fiction. The more that we think about the future, and manufacture the so-called civilized world, the farther we distance ourselves from nature, the land and ourselves. The backdrop is composed of hyperspectral image classification, a form of algorithmic imaging that allows for understanding of the terrain, often used to improve land use for farming. Guan Xiao's use of the backdrop and creation of studio photo-shoot environment as a spatial device underscores the porous nature of image production that pervades our understanding of physical reality.

Often found in grocery stores, butcher shops and the like, PVC curtains often demarcate a space for its hygiene or climate control. The curtains each feature the dual nature of fermentation, as a form of rotting and preservation, as well as a performance enhancer or hangover cure.

From the Work Cycle 'Pickle Politics'

Whether microbes or mitochondria dwelling furtively on the skin or non-native agents living within us: bacteria comprise one kilogram of the average human body. 'Pickle Politics' looks to the practices and symbolism of fermentation, constructing a political argument using notions of the rotten, the spoiled, and the soured.

This series of large-scale manicured fingers come out of an early body of work titled 'The Girlfriend Experience' initiated during Anna Uddenberg’s studies at Städelschule in Frankfurt. With this series, the artist set out to explore the commodified experience of girlfriends-for-hire, an escort service that has gained in popularity in the last decades. She researched the language used to advertise this service and was particularly interested in the strategies to stage authenticity and genuineness. These large sculptures remain compelling objects that stand alone as signifiers of the fetishization of the body. As part-objects severed from a body, magnified and elevated to the status of artworks that stand in the gallery space like dominating pillars, this work demonstrates Anna Uddenberg’s excessive gesture to address the glamorization of the body. The effect is fascinating, but also profoundly uncanny and even discomforting.