Detailed Information & Biography

Ibrahim Quraishi belongs to a new generation of makers challenging our understanding of visual performativity and its relationship to the broader cultural perspective. As one of the recipients of the first Ö1 Prix Jardin d’Europe Prize residency in 2008 for his piece Islamic Violins at ImPulsTanz, Quraishi consciously examines the dynamics of dispossession and cohabitation inside the contours of the visual arts context, while freely playing with the tensions between the complexity of the real and our longing for simplicity within our bodies. Defined by a nomadic existence while escaping the conventional rules of engagement in researching, teaching and creating works for places like HAU: Hebbel-am-ufer (Berlin), X Baltic Triennal (Vilnius), Bastakiya Art Fair (Dubai), Africa Center (Cape Town), Gallerie Lumen Travo (Amsterdam), Baku Biennale (Baku), Frascati (Amsterdam), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), National Museum of Singapore, Asia Society (New York), Japan Foundation (Tokyo), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), The Kitchen (NY), iDANS Istanbul, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival New York), Springdance (Utrecht) while also teaching at SNDO Amsterdam, Universität der Künste Berlin among others.

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The research process of residency will take 4 possible forms:

1) "making" objects that seems ordinary but on closer inspection clearly have no utilitarian purpose.

2) working with approximately 14 men (varying ages) on their physical handling of different objects and their relationship to normative physicality or heightened presence with the objects and researching the transformation of the individuals‘ active physical relationship with the material at hand and further. Animal sounds are part of the sonic variable with the physical objects and the way men create a raw sonic space.

3) Then photographing men in suits and naked with objects and their relationship to those objects as a symbolic composite.

4) Then possibly presenting the "documentation," through a research essay and an installation of the images and bodies themselves.