Crossing : Exhibition Cape Town with Karem Ibrahim

CROSSING : Katharina Lökenhoff and Karem Ibrahim

We love the idea of a borderless world. According to Achille Mbembes argument in his lecture on Human Values at Yale University in March 2018, that “the power of the border lies in its capacity to regulate the multiple distributions of populations on the body of the earth, and in so doing, to affect the vital forces of all kinds of beings”[i] we are longing to break down the fences. In this sence it was our idea to remove all safety precautions in and around the exhibition place, to take away the barbed wire, the alarm system and the gates. As we are faced with the impossibility of achieving such a project we decided to challenge our selves by creating a space that emulates what we wanted to do with our original idea:

A sculptural installation invites to travers once own threshold, hearing words about other individual Crossing-processes.

The work emerges in the context of Katharina Lökenhoff´s artistic research project, which is dedicated to find new and sustainable life strategies. On the foundation that it is not the artists duty to give answers but to ask questions, the project includes documentary - interviews with other artists in very different places, like Iceland, Finland, Egypt, Libanon and now South Africa. The results about the phenomenon of thresholds are presented in the installation.

As a travelling artist coming fro Germany Katharina Lökenhoff basic question is: How can we strengthen our human quality to be connected through art? It is the aim of the project to show that for cultural life / to survive can be redefined and made possible through exchange rather than demarcation. The exhibition is a collaboration with Karem Ibrahim, an Egyptian artist based in London. Since his arrival in Europe 1998 Karem Ibrahim has been engaged with the idea of multiple identities, and by the need to grasp why do people move from one place to an other and how does that effect them. Since 2003 he has being making works relating to what he calls the idea of the in-between. He works in multitude of mediums, sculptures, performances, films and other forms of productions. Both artists will combine their working methodologies and ideas according to the issues of “borders” to bring about a body of work that will relate to their diverse backgrounds and ways of working with different materials. Coming together at Greatmore Studios they are looking at Crossing processes in the environment and in themselves, sharing this in the exhibition.

[i] Mbembe Achille: The Idea of a Borderless World. Chimurenga Chronic. p. 4, Vlaeberg, South Africa. 2018