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Chkoun Ahna Opens Tunisia's Contemporary Chapter
On May 12, the National Museum of Carthage, Tunisia, opens an exhibition of contemporary art for the first time, in its east wing. The exhibition, "Chkoun Ahna," which translates to "who are we?" or "about us" in Tunisian Arabic, inaugurates Carthage Contemporary, a contemporary art exhibition to be installed in a different site in the city annually. The initiation of the exhibition program, and the contemporary nature of the works included in this year's show, indicate an upsurge in new cultural production in Tunisia that followed last winter's Jasmine Revolution. Chkoun Ahna represents the country's manifold history and the ethnic, political, and cultural facets of contemporary Tunisian society.
Timo Kaabi-Linke, a German sociologist and writer living in Tunis, who organized the show with Khadija Hamdi, an art historian based in Tunis and Paris, spoke with A.i.A. about the exhibition and the cultural climate in Tunisia. Before the revolution, he said, "the whole art scene was living in a cocoon. Now there's a kind of opening."
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Mark Robbins Named Executive Director at ICP
The International Center of Photography has selected Mark Robbins as its new executive director. Robbins, who will assume the post in July, is currently the dean of the School of Architecture at Syracuse University.
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Dr Achim Borchardt-Hume Named Head of Exhibitions at Tate Modern
Dr. Achim Borchardt-Hume has been named the new head of exhibitions at Tate Modern.
Borchardt-Hume will manage exhibitions, commissions, live events and film, as well as advance the museum's global range. Alongside gallery director Chris Dercon and head of program realization Helen Sainsbury, he will also be integral in developing Tate Modern's new performance space, the underground oil tanks, which open in July.
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Ellen Altfest Shows Some Skin
When the New York Times interviewed Ellen Altfest in 2005, it was for a story about the popularity of nude modeling sessions among young New York artists. For several years, Altfest had been painting richly textured still lifes with trees, cacti and twisted hunks of driftwood. Now, she said, she was considering forays into portraiture. There was just one problem with the sessions, she joked: all these naked women were getting a bit boring. When would they get to paint men?
It was a prescient glimpse into the direction her career would take. In 2006, Altfest embarked on a series of photorealistic paintings of nude males, some of which will be on view in her first solo museum exhibition, "Head and Plant," opening May 6 at the New Museum.
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Double Painting with Ned Vena
In his second solo exhibition at Clifton Benevento in New York, Brooklyn-based artist Ned Vena applies a singular painterly gesture to multiple unique works. "To make two separate paintings from one gesture was an attempt to embrace the feeling that I was making the same painting over and over again," Vena told A.i.A of his work, which varies in color and materials, but is always ruled by the grid. "I wanted to diffuse the unique and singular results of the individual works and create two objects from an individual process."Read More
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Butt Johnson's "Untitled Floral Pastiche" series consists of four drawings, each of which is organized around a different flower. Johnsons had long co
