THE EXCHANGE ON SUNDAY ! ARTIST PROFILE P. 2 • TED GLOBAL P.4 A TONIC OF TRAILS P.8 • POETRY P.10 • RECIPE P.11
Throughout history we have looked to art as a means of expression, a source of inspiration, and a place where we might find solace. Stirring us deep within, or motivating to action, we engage with it on so many levels. A musical interlude, disturbing drama, a movement, classic film moment, or a piece of poetry read on the bus… Is it the humanity within it, the uniqueness in each one of us, that allows our relationship with each piece of art that touches us to become so impossibly personal? How would one begin to describe looking into their mother’s eyes for the first time? Could we even recall that moment? Perhaps not, but where there is feeling, a bond is made which lasts, evolves, transforms and makes us who we are. Through art, in its many guises, we connect with these moments, we create and recreate them. We also, at times must reject them. I, then, venture that art is love, and that our relationship with it can be as blissful, passionate or stormy as the word suggests. In my humble opinion, from cradle to grave, it is love that we seek, and that this search will never and should never end. I invite you to share with us the chance to connect - Here every day, and here on Sunday! Sooree Pillay
Check the les! bubb
30.06.2013 / #3
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet. Bob Dylan… Bob Marley… Roger Miller…? Answers on a postcard!
THE WEEK AHEAD AT NAE THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION Main Gallery film installation by John Akomfrah open till Sunday 14 July, free! HUMANS CREATE, HUMANS DESTROY Mezzanine Gallery exhibition of BlankAltas Saturday 13 July - Saturday 3 August, free! A MIGHTY FINE IDEA Central Gallery exhibition about art and faith open till Wednesday 7 August, free! COMMUNITY FILM SCREENING: OPEN CALL Local filmmakers showcase their work Friday 5 July, 6-8pm, £3 full/£2 concs This issue of ‘The Exchange on Sunday!’ has been put together by: Bethan Davis, Maria Rosaria Digregorio, Skinder Hundal, Sooree Pillay.
Submissions to Sooree@nae.org.uk Deadline every Monday! Set in Merriweather, printed at NAE on Steinbeis MagicColour green 80 g/m².
2 • ARTIST PROFILE
Nahla sebaei Egyptian visual artist speaks about her artistic journey by SOOREE PILLAY
As drops of rain fill our coffee cups, so I am introduced to Nahla Sebaei Ahmed… A new arrival to Nottingham, she is an artist, embarking on a journey here at New Art Exchange as an EVS* volunteer from Egypt, and I want to know more… The first thing I learn about her, as we later whizz into town on the tram, is that her name means ‘the first sip’… Nahla… how beautiful, and it reminds me of the moment when I looked at my own child for the first time, wondering how to give a name to something so uniquely perfect.
Nahla Sebaei
Sooree Pillay is, was, and will be for a while longer...
As we carelessly chatter, Nahla speaks of some of the challenges that she faced being a young girl in her country. The difficulty of travelling alone, the harassment she faced in the street. Needless to say, this is punctuated with wonderful accounts of Egypt, the landscape, the people, her family. Though she states that: “Sometimes it can be hard to be free… Art is limitless, and children need to express and discover themselves in this world.” Nahla has built her artistic career by painting on canvas, shells, leather, copper, silver, glass beads, all manner of things it seems. She has worked with watercolour, oil paints and acrylics, from classical portrait painting to pointillism, and using a myriad of vibrant colours, it seems that Nahla wants the world on her palate. I ask her from where she gets her inspiration. “Nature” she states immediately, and without hesitation. As I question further she tells me that she has been collecting shells for a long time. That she didn’t really know what she would do with them, but then began to paint on them. Delving further, she remarks: “Shells represent protecting us from what is outside because we are fragile.” As she magically, lyrically, explains her relationship with each of the pieces that she works on, I am beginning to see that these are not simply pieces of craft, that each one has its own singular and special relationship with the artist. No two pieces are the same, and she would not wish them to be.
3 • THE EXCHANGE ON SUNDAY!
Moving on to the more conceptual work Nahla has been involved in, she speaks of Burning Soul, shown as part of the Enough exhibition (Darb 1718, 2012), the focus on harassment: “When I was in Egypt I faced a lot of harassment in the street, verbal and physical. Every time I left home I was nervous I would face something like this.” Working together with graphic designer, Islam Ayyad, a piece was created, using crumpled paper for clothes, Nahla then burnt the paper. Nude figures showed the scars beneath the clothes: “Harassment,” she says, “leaves a scar on your body and your soul, because it burns your soul.”
Burning Soul, a project about Sexual Harassment, concept Nahla Sebaei and Islam Ayyad, photography and editing Islam Ayyad. ‘When someone harasses me verbally or physically, I feel my body burn and that harasser is stripping me of my clothes and my body. He is burning my soul and that leaves scars in my mind and my feeling and my soul.’
Another installation work this time, Sewing Hope (2011), was using the lifecycle of the butterfly. Speaking more conceptually about the project, again Nahla refers to the need to take care of our children today. She goes on: “The process of the butterfly we can go through in one day or we could go through it throughout our life… if we have a problem we need to close as a cocoon until we understand it… we also sacrifice things within ourselves to become something else… the cocoon is the potential to become something else.” Nahla’s breadth of experience informs and feeds into all of her work, her life. I want to know what aspirations she brings to Nottingham: “I want to find a way to help people here. I want to learn about NGOs, how they work, how to plan and run them from A to Z! I see myself going more into conceptual art, I see myself helping through art, art therapy perhaps.”
So, from first meetings to being reborn, I see the child in Nahla, the artist and the strength in her as a woman. Leading us from shells on the beach to the dusty streets of Cairo, and now landing in Nottingham, ‘the first sip’ is just the beginning it seems!
*EVS – European Volunteer Service
4 • TED GLOBAL 2013
TED Global 2013 by SKINDER HUNDAL
TED Global (TG) is a conference that spreads ideas. Edinburgh is its current home and in 2014 it will move to Rio De Janeiro, Brasília. TG is one of several conferences organised by TED, an extraordinary platform sharing a plethora of ideas delivered through a conference format of presentations and talks, recorded and then made available free online at www.ted.com. TED, founded by Richard Saul Wurman, attracts millions of viewers each day to its website. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and launched in 1984. Previous speakers have included founders of Google, (ex) Presidents and Prime Ministers, for example the likes of Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Larry Page and Sergy Brin and now Hetain Patel! Last week NAE helped present artist Hetain Patel speak at the June TG conference in Edinburgh. A defining moment for both Hetain and NAE, it was also recognition that art is at the heart of ideas in our world today and tomorrow. When Hetain posted the good news on his Facebook account I remember reading a friend’s response, “well… now you can retire”. The TED kudos and association is huge. As a believer in hard work, this experience can only strengthen Hetain’s determination to work even harder. His performance was an 8 minute adaptation of his highly acclaimed, Be Like Water (launched at Royal
Opera House, November 2012) where NAE was a commissioning partner. Hetain re-wrote this version in collaboration with dramaturge Eva Martinez, and using recorded music by Ling Peng. To condense a complex and hi-tech 50 minute show into 8 minutes was an immense challenge, made into a reality here at TED. Travelling to TG and accompanying me were three ‘dream team’ individuals: Hetain Patel, Yuyu Rau and Eva Martinez. We came back from TG really enthused, inspired and changed. What I liked the most about the talk was the use of conceptual performance and visual art work to articulate and present ideas, making the audience think and rethink concepts about how we observe and make judgments through him and eventually about him. This was an extremely entertaining and humorous performance with a succinct and simple message, exploring the complexities that make up the answer before revealing it. From start to finish he continuously pulled the rug from under us, cleverly
Everytime I fail to become more like my father I become more like myself, everytime I fail to become Bruce Lee I become more authentically me. Hetain Patel
5 • THE EXCHANGE ON SUNDAY! Skinder Hundal is CEO of NAE and is interested in the ‘emergence’ and ‘dream’
subverting fiction to fact and vice versa whilst maintaining a clear message. Like the gentleman thief, Apollo Robbins, he presented a whirlwind of movements where truth is disguised in a multitude of clever layers - he even gets his translating actor, a professional dancer, to adopt a new stage identity alien to her. Art work performed on a TED stage as a talk is novel, making it unique as well as entertaining and engaging. The thousand strong audience was made up of leaders in their own respective and highly diverse fields from science, to art, commerce to theology, and the response was immense. Instant success could be felt, with laughter and intrigue filling the huge auditorium at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. I remember the afterparty well, where it took Hetain almost an hour to move ten metres, swamped with intrigue, a new fan base and well wishers. Hetain’s career and life may well change as a consequence. The piece itself explored the ‘authentic self’. While collaborator Yuyu Rau, a trained dancer, acts as a translator, Hetain delivers his performance in Mandarin. Hetain explored what defines him, whilst exploring and revealing our own assumptions and prejudices. In this multi-layered piece, Hetain concluded that to find his authentic self is a subjective journey where clarity emerges through constant imitations, interpretations and observations but also inherited traits. More
compelling, the conclusion that failing to be something you want to become, in the end, defines who you really are, almost like the anti-reaction or anti-result you initially set out to achieve. That failure or imitation reveals a truth about yourself. My interpretation of the narrative is that the definition of the true self takes many years, traits and behaviours, inherited but also observed from myriad mediums of communication, cultural exchanges and life experiences. In Hetain’s case, from comic and cultural legends Spiderman and Bruce Lee to family members, especially his Dad, helping to define his authentic core. Be Like Water is a highly conceptual and humorous piece where the audience is left intoxicated with intrigue and humour. Talking to and observing the audience, the majority were left guessing constantly as Hetain morphed into different persona. Even Hetain’s conclusion left the audience oscillating between fact and fiction, unsure as to whether this was the true Hetain speaking. See page 9 for the ‘Tonic of Trails’ from Hetain, YuYu and Eva and read more about their TED experiences.
Hetain Patel, Eva Martinez, YuYu Rau and Skinder Hundal at TED Global 2013
6 • HOME AND AWAY
Move Your World workshop with artist Jay Pollitt (15 June, photo by Muhammed El Nahas)
The Art Exchange (January 2007, photo by Ashok Mistry)
The NAE page in the Google Cultural Institute feauturing the story of the Speed Sisters, the first all-female auto-racing team from Palestine author of the previous NAE exhibition ‘Realism in Rawiya’
7 • THE EXCHANGE ON SUNDAY!
The New Art Exchange (July 2008, photo by David Sillitoe)
Sura Susso performing at NAE (21 June, photo by Muhammed El Nahas)
NAE Learning and Community Engagement Co-ordinator Glenis Williams introducing the Nottingham Artscape - Plotting your schools Art Journey event (12 June, photo by Muhammed El Nahas)
YARD group at the ‘a Mighty FINE Idea’ launch (19 June, photo by Maria Rosaria Digregorio)
8 • A TONIC OF TRAILS The team at New Art Exchange is constantly out and about searching for great art and inspiration. In this section we are creating a trail and connection to places we visit and artists or instigators. We are keen on sharing with you because they inspire us or touch us deeply. We call it ‘a Tonic of Trails’. The term tonic is musical in its tone and rhythm and certainly intoxicating in its mix.
Ryan Trecartin at Venice Biennale Candice Jacobs’s trail Without doubt Ryan Trecartin’s five-screen video installation with staged seating environments called ‘sculptural theatres’ by Lizzie Fitch was the highlight to my first-time Venice experience. Hosting a cast of fascinating individuals acting out self-referential roles in a twisted reality, contained within a fabricated environment that included themed zones (think of a cross between The Crystal Maze and The Word), with a hot tub, a spinning Candice Jacobs is an bed, tiered seating, artist curator based at moveable stages the Thorsby Street, she released from the spends a lot of time in floor and ceiling; the Attic! and a few toilets thrown in for good measure. Imagine, Jerry Springer does Keeping Up With The Kardashians does Takeshi’s Castle does MTV Cribs all in Oprah’s TV studio, being streamed live over the internet with features you might find on EuroTrash and you’ll only be part-way there to even imagining what this world was like.
ur Join o n si e cours ance d k Katha oeira! or Cap
Shubbak is back on track! Sara Hany’s trail Shubbak which literally means window in Arabic is indeed a wide open window showcasing Arab contemporary culture, tradition and heritage. A variety of events take place across London from the Sara Hany is a visual largest venues to artist from Alexandria, places attracting Egypt. She is currently niche audiences. volunteering at NAE Venues include The as part of her one British Museum, year EVS program in The Barbican, Nottingham. Tate Modern, The Arab British Centre, the Lyric Square in Hammersmith, The Mosaic Rooms, La Galleria, The Lion and Unicorn Theatre for example. There is something for everyone it seems so whatever art you prefer you will more than likely find it, so rich pickings including live performances,fashion and design, film screenings, exhibitions. There is a lot of choice! Shubbak provides a spirited and vibrant insight into Arabic cultures especially to audiences who are curious to explore and re-explore. A strong feature in Shubbak Festival is to provide an outstanding opportunity for young and emerging artists to present at an international level in a major city like London. Those young artists symbolise a future legacy for beating heart of Shubbak’s future. So, people, open your shubbak and enjoy this cultural and artistic breeze!
9 • THE EXCHANGE ON SUNDAY!
Ted Global 2013 Eva Martinez’s trail TED is such an amazing thing. Like many, I only experienced it online until recently, when I had the incredible opportunity to attend the week long TED Global 2013 conference. Artist Hetain Patel, was invited to give a talk and I worked with him Eva Martinez works and dancer Yuyu with change and Rau, as dramaturge growth, with artists to bring the ideas and arts organisations. to the surface and She is a performing help make the best arts curator and performance/talk dramaturge, as well as that we could. a strategic consultant Here are 10 things and a certified personal I take away from coach. attending: 1. Making sense of our world with other people is totally uplifting. 2. Listening ignites the human mind. Always. 3. The stage is a powerful place to share ideas with each other. 4. Finding alternatives takes commitment to proper thinking time and genuinely open dialogue. Think again (as TED’s motto was this year) 5. Being entrepreneurial means taking your life into your own hands. 6. The state might still be the best organisation to create innovation. Really! 7. Bees are vital to our eco-system: plant local flowers into your garden. 8. Business is creating shared value. Creating value is = social value + economic value. They don’t have to go against each other. 9. Doubt is essential to faith, not the opposite of faith. 10. We have the choice to chose which society we want to live in.
Hetain Patel’s trail Particularly memorable talks were those where preconceived and widely accepted ideas in society Hetain Patel is a visual were completely turned on their artist and would like heads. In particular to ‘Be Like’ Spider Man businessman Eric and Bruce Lee. Li suggested a very convincing alternative perspective on democracy and the Chinese government. In addition, I was deeply affected by the unexpected response to our talk– Aside from artistic validation, it was energising to feel that alongside science, technology, business and politics, that art was accepted in this community of influential world thinkers to be just as important in making impactful change in the world. This inspiration and gratitude will stay with me for a long time. YuYu Rau’s trail Passion and perseverance is what I take away from TED. It showed me the importance of keep going and having YuYu Rau is a belief in what I feel freelance dancer and is good and always choreographer who having HOPE in my explores the beauty heart. of life and is currently based in London.
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10 • POETRY Roshni Belakavadi Exhibitions and Programme Co-ordinator at NAE, loves Instagram, cooking and anything that the Indian poet, Tagore ever wrote.
Rabindranath Tagore selected by ROSHNI BELAKAVADI
An excerpt from ‘Gitanjali’
Indian poet, philosopher, musician, Nobel laureate, Tagore will be celebrated at NAE as part of Mela 100 in September 2013.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action – Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
11 • RECIPE OF THE WEEK
PANEER AND RICOTTA Say cheese!
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by MARIA ROSARIA DIGREGORIO
I’m fascinated by the idea of making everything I need, it reminds me of utopian worlds without money, bartering, where you work just to get directly what you need for your life, including food. Making cheese on your own, for instance, it’s as easy as buying it from the supermarket, but is much more magical. Ingredients My Indian flatmate taught me that to make paneer you need just milk and vinegar (or lemon juice) to make it curdle. The proportion are two tablespoons of vinegar (or one lemon) for every litre of milk, although the measures that I used were judged by my eye.
Maria Rosaria Digregorio (better Saria) is a designer interested in books, self-publishing, analogue and digital crafts, currently in residence at NAE.
Preparation • Set the milk up to boil over low heat otherwise it sticks. • When it comes to the boil, add vinegar stirring continuously: suddenly the milk splits into small lumps and becomes curd (honestly). • After about a minute the milk should be completely curdled so remove it from the heat. • Drain the whey (the excess liquid) using a cloth placed over a large bowl. • Wash the curd a bit if you don’t like the vinegar aftertaste. • Wrap the cloth, squeeze it and place it under something heavy for about an hour to make it compact. Paneer it’s ready! What about ricotta? If you save the whey before before washing the curd and you cook it again, you will get ricotta, that in Italian means literally ‘recooked’. It seems that nobody in India recooks the whey after making paneer, so I can’t help but be really sad for all the ricotta that has never been made there. Anyway, also making ricotta is so easy that I really would like to spread the word – but I might have to try the recipe first.
12 • COMING UP AT NAE
Fiona Malena Flamenco WITH GUITARIST
Liron Man Global flamenco phenomenon Fiona Malena is coming to New art exchange for a special performance with guitarist Liron Man. With sellout shows throughout Spain, Fiona’s performances have been described as passionate and innovative.
New Art Exchange 39-41 Gregory Boulevard Nottingham NG7 6BE
0115 924 8630 info@nae.org.uk
SUNDAY 21 JULY, 6PM NEW ART EXCHANGE £10 FULL / £8 CONCESSION BOOK SOON TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT!