KWM artcenter is pleased to present its second collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, London from 18 April to 11 June 2019. Throughout 2019, KWM artcenter will be screening a series of moving image works as part of the Artists’ Film International (AFI) project based on the theme of gender. AFl celebrates moving image work and is selected by a global partnership of arts organisations including KWM artcenter. Each nominates an outstanding work from their region which is screened across each venue during the year.

The second 3 selected films are Colombian/British artist Carolina Caycedo’s Apariciones / Apparitions  (2018) selected by the Ballroom in Marfa, US; Italian artist Jacopo Miliani ’s Deserto (2017) selected by GAMeC in Bergamo, Italy; and Turkish artist Senem Gokce Ogultekin’s Dun (EV) (2018) selected by Istanbul Modern in Turkey.

Apariciones / Apparitions (2018) depicts ghost-like dancers inhabiting the historic Los Angeles landmark, The Huntington Library and its Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The brown, black, and queer bodies haunt The Huntington’s iconic and traditional spaces – such as the sweeping sculpture-lined North Vista lawn, the Ahmanson rare-book and manuscripts reading room, or the Portrait Gallery that houses Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy – in sensuous movements informed by the rituals of Afro-Brazilian deity, Oxum, an Orisha (or goddess) representing water, sexual pleasure, fertility, and love. The bodies of the dancers, or phantoms, become sources of knowledge, and their gaze holds the viewer accountable, something that is too often missing from history and art; inhabiting historically white spaces in ways that they have never been inhabited before.

Deserto (2017) reflects on the possibility of speaking about multiple identities through the invention of a new language. Through only the movement of two hands and a voice over, the desert is evoked as the place where the sand never takes a precise shape. The desert is also a symbolic reference to two specific films: Teorema (1968) by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) by Stephan Elliot. The protagonists of these movies are ‘the Guest’ (a mysterious stranger with a fluid sexuality) and Bernadette (a transgender character), respectively, and both played by the same British actor Terence Stamp. These films are the starting point for the text created by the artist and narrated by a voiceover, where real and fictional identities disappear, dismantling the existence of any fixed role.

Dun (EV) (2018) was shot among the ruins of the 10th AD historical town of Ani next to the closed border between Armenia and Turkey. The land on the two sides of the border meet and are in dialogue with each other through the bodily interaction of the two dancers, one from Turkey and the other from Armenia. It is a story of mutual nourishment and possible future building based on dance and sensuous listening of the space by two old souls. The film takes its starting point from the idea that when we give space to our sensuous bodily existence we are able to transcend cultural borders and refrain ourselves from dissecting and calculating world views. Then abstract identities such as gender, nationality, style, and ideology disappear revealing concrete living beings in bodies that sweat, shiver and breathe, adorned with a heart that loves, mourns, and hopes.

Special Thanks: Exclusive audio equipment sponsor KEF

About the Artist

Carolina Caycedo

b. 1978, London
Lives and works in Los Angeles.
She graduated from Roski School of Fine Arts and University of Southern California. Los Angeles. Solo Exhibitions and Projects (selection) includes: Meeting of the Waters. 8th Session MOP Water Convention. UNECE. Astana, Kazakhstan (2018); Conjuro de la Locura / Spell of Madness. NUMU. Guatemala (2017); One Body of Water. The Bowtie Project, Clockshop. Los Angeles (2015); Land of Friends. Gayle and Ed Roski Gallery. Los Angeles (2014): The Headlong Stream is Termed Violent, but the Riverbed Hemming it in is Termed Violent by No One. DAAD, Berlin
(2013); Criminal Women. Frieze Frame. London (2012). Group Exhibitons and Projects (selection) includes:
Made in L.A. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Between the Waters. Whitney Museum. New York (2018); Treasure of the Southern Sojourn. Seoul Museum of Art. Korea (2017); The Distance Plan: Climate and Infrastructure.

Jacopo Miliani

born in Florence, he lives and works in Milan. The work of Jacopo Miliani is based on an interdisciplinary research involving different practices such as video, installation, performance, collage, photography. Solo exhibitions include: Galeria Rosa Santos, Valencia (2018), Marselleria, Milano (2017), Matadero, Madrid (2017), Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2016), Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona (2016), ICA studio, London (2015), Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires (2014), GAM, Turin (2013), EX3, Florence (2012) and the exhibitions at Studio Dabbeni in Lugano (2015 e 2010) and FRUTTA gallery in Rome (2012 e 2014). He realized several performances including: Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017), David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2016-2012), Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2015), Museum of Dance, Stockholm (2014), CCSP, Sao Paulo (2014), ViaFarini/DOCVA, Milan (2014), MADRE, Naples (2011).

Senem Gökçe Oğultekin is performer, choreographer and moviemaker based in Turkey and Germany. She studied dancing at the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen. She has been performing at theaters such as Theatre de la Ville, Kaaitheater, Pact Zollverein and has participated festivals like Biennale di Venezia, Tanzplattform Deutschland, Kunstenfestivaldesarts and Rencontres Choreographique de Saint Denis. By using multimedia, dance, body research, improvisation and vocal work, Senem Gökçe Oğultekin creates hybrid works which play with the boundaries of art categories.

金杜艺术中心（KWM artcenter）
The KWM artcenter opened on 20th October 2016. It is located on the second floor of the WFC centre CBD in Beijing. The Art center is supported by the law firm King & Wood Mallesons. The KWM artcenter presents and promotes artists both domestically and overseas as well as building up its own collection. In particular, it acts as a rare art institution at the heart of the economic central area in Beijing. It provides high-quality art educational activities and courses aimed to cultivate art lovers and collectors. It serves to improve the international influence of Chinese Art and become a powerful communicator of Chinese Contemporary Art.