Breda Beban
The Complicity of Gestures
Past
9 June – 17 September 2011
11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki
On Thursday 9 June 2011, Kalfayan Galleries, 11 Haritos Street, Athens, between 20:00 and 22:00, will present “The Complicity of Gestures”, the first solo exhibition of Serbian-born artist Breda Beban in Greece.
Focal point of the exhibition will be a film installation titled “The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha” (2006). This striking work was shown at Tate Britain in 2008. Filmed at a gathering of Romany brass bands in Serbia, the film captures a moment of passion between a belly dancer and a young man. The film’s two-screen design allows the viewer to witness the tension between the unedited recording of a real-life event and its fictionalization through post-production.
In dialogue with the film installation, the exhibition features two photographic series: an ongoing series from 2008 titled “Arte Vivo”, which was triggered by Beban’s childhood imagination and by Argentinean artist Alberto Greco’s 1962 performance “Vivo Dito”, as well as a series titled “I Lay on the Bed Waiting for his Heart to Stop Beating” (2000). The latter documents a six-year period from the first morning in exile from former Yugoslavia of the artist and her partner Hrvoje Horvatic until the morning of Horvatic’s death in a London hospital.
Breda Beban is an artist, filmmaker and curator. Born in Serbia, she currently lives and works in London and Sheffield, where she is a Professor of Media Arts at the Sheffield Hallam University.
The artist has exhibited extensively in Europe and the U.S.A. In 2001 Beban received the Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Arts, UK. Her film “Jason’s Dream” received the Silver Award for Music Film & Video, Worldfest, Houston International Film Festival, USA, 1998. She was also the lead curator/creative producer of imagine art after, a multi-stage exhibition for gallery and broadcast whose first edition was on show at Tate Britain (October 2007 – January 2008).
“The Complicity of Gestures” was conceived and put together by the artist together with independent curator Eline van der Vlist.
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Breda Beban
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