The Outset Partners Awards Programme has supported the International Curators Forum (ICF) with an Impact Award, through three consecutive cycles (Cycles I – III) between 2019-2021, in undertaking the re-development of the Diaspora Pavilion project model. This model was initially tested between 2016 and 2018 with a professional development programme for emerging artists and included exhibitions in Venice and Wolverhampton. Diaspora Pavilion (2016-2018) was a major exhibition which was conceived as a challenge to the prevalence of national pavilions within the structure of the Venice Biennale. It took its form from the coming-together of nineteen artists whose practices in many ways expand, complicate and even destabilise diaspora as a term, whilst highlighting the continued relevance that diaspora as a lived reality holds today.
Diaspora Pavilion II (2019 – 2023) was a series of peripatetic, trans-national exhibitions, events and exchanges taking place in Sydney, London, Venice and online presented by the International Curators Forum in partnership with a cohort of international partners including 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney), Campbelltown Arts Centre (Sydney), Block 336 (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), VeniceArtFactory (Venice) and Contemporis ets (Venice).
Research phase:
The first stage of the re-development process involved initiating conversations with a group of selected artists by inviting them to actively participate in research trips organised by the ICF team centred around the opening of a major international Biennale.
The first trip in this series was to Venice during the opening days of the 58th Venice Biennale (10 – 14 May 2019), entitled May You Live In Interesting Times and curated by Ralph Rugoff. The impetus for selecting this Biennale as a case study is the project’s connection to Venice as the location of the 2017 Diaspora Pavilion and a prospective location for an exhibition in 2019, as well as the Diaspora Pavilion’s direct responsiveness to the limits of the notion of national pavilions in representing contemporary artistic practice. The artists who participated in this trip were Shiraz Bayjoo, Veronica Ryan, Sonia Barrett and Evariste Maiga.
The second trip was to Istanbul during the opening days of the 16th Istanbul Biennial (12 – 13 September 2019), entitled The Seventh Continent and curated by Nicolas Bourriaud. The impetus for selecting this Biennial as a case study for the research and development phase of the programme is the curator’s exploration of the cultural consequences of the human impact on the world. The artists who participated in this trip are Daniela Yohannes, Lungiswa Gqunta, Jade Montserrat and Kashif Nadim Chaudry.
Exhibition phase – Outset supported exhibitions:
Zot Konn – Yeman: Diaspora Pavilion 2, Venice featuring a new commission by Shiraz Bayjoo
Participants: Shiraz Bayjoo, Siyabonga Mthembu, Nicolas Faubert
Dates: 20 – 22 April 2022, daily performances at 12pm, 3pm & 6pm
Location: Groggia Theatre, Cannaregio, Venice
Curated by: Jessica Taylor
Presented by: ICF in partnership with Venice Art Factory and Contemporis ets
Supported by: Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Arts Council England
For ICF’s Diaspora Pavilion 2: Venice, Shiraz Bayjoo presented a new performance and installation in collaboration with Nicolas Faubert and Siyabonga Mthembu during the vernissage of the 59th Venice Biennale. This new commission, conceived by Bayjoo, featured moving image, sculptural installation, choreographed movement enacted by Faubert and vocal performances by Mthembu.
The title Zot Konn – Yeman brought together Mauritian Creole and the Bantu language Fang, merging the two African languages spoken by Bayjoo and Faubert’s ancestors. Translated as ‘they know – the wise’ the title referred to a collective questioning of existing systems of knowledge and an active pursuit of wisdom. The works in the installation featured still and moving images captured by Bayjoo of plants, archives and architectures found at Kew Gardens in London during a period of research that sought to interrogate the transplantation of species from Mauritius to the UK during colonial rule and their current place in the nation’s archives.
I am a heart beating in the world: Diaspora Pavilion 2, Sydney
Participants: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Daniela Yohannes, Leyla Stevens, Zadie Xa, Kashif Nadim Chaudry, Linde Lee
Dates: 22 May – 10 October 2021
Location: Campbelltown Arts Centre, on the land of the Dharawal people, in Sydney, Australia
Curated by: Adelaide Bannerman, Mikala Tai and Jessica Taylor
Presented by: ICF, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Campbelltown Arts Centre
Supported by: Arts Council England, Australia Council for the Arts, DCMS, British Council, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, NSW Government, Campbelltown City Council, Canada Council for the Arts
This group exhibition considered how the participating artists’ connections to ancestral homes are maintained and re-imagined through memories, myths and traditions. In the exhibition, Lindy Lee explored the feelings of absence in the diaspora in the works Fire in the Immanence of Unfolding (2020), Fire and Dew (2020), and Quiescent Mind (2020), and engaged family photographs in Birth and Death (2002) and Twinning through jade bamboo (2015). Daniela Yohannes also incorporated family photos into her collages, a series of self-truths (2018), and offered a meditation on our relationships to ‘homelands’ in the film Atopias: I Have Left that Dark Cave Forever, My Body has Blended with Hers (2020). Leyla Stevens’ photographic diptych, Safe Passage (2013) and film, Our Sea is Always Hungry (2018) interrogate what is seen and unseen in the Balinese landscape.
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah exhibited two new sculptures, Buraq (2020) and Throne Room (2021), alongside Merantau (2016), all of which connect in different ways to his ancestry in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Kashif Nadim Chaudry presented two sculptures, Hareem (2010) and Cabal (2020), which consider the cultural and social forces that inform his experiences as a gay man of Pakistani heritage in the UK. Zadie Xa’s large tapestry works A Pilgrimage 2 Family Through the Portal of a Green Ghost and its counterpart A Pilgrimage 2 Family Through the Portal of a Blue Ghost (2019) and film installation Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes of Creation (2019) imagine new worlds informed by Korean creation myths.
International Curators Forum (ICF) was founded in 2007 to promote, encourage and develop curatorial and artistic practice and discourse about contemporary visual arts across all forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, film and live performance art. ICF does this through commissioning, programming and presenting exhibitions, projects and events that promote and support the professional development and expertise of curators and artists at all stages of their professional career. ICF’s professional development programmes also involve international networking trips, masterclasses, residencies and mentoring.
ARTIST CONVERSATIONS of I am a heart beating in the world:
