Installation Index

New Babylon

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Dubai, 2020

Video installation 41:24 min, loop, sound, 112.40 × 200 cm

Excerpt loop (1:58 min) from the video sequence of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (at 828 metres the world’s highest building) superimposed on an adaptation of the painting The Tower of Babel (1587) by an unknown Flemish painter of the Lucas van Valckenborch school.  

THE ROYAL ATLANTIS EXPERIENCE

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Dubai, 2020

Video installation 27:20 min, loop, sound, 77.70 × 138 cm

Excerpt loop (2:17 min) from the video sequence of the Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences construction site in Dubai, superimposed on the painting Promenade du Harem (1856) by Jean-Léon Gérôme.The long installation version starts before sunrise; the website’s excerpt loop starts just as the sun begins to rise and at the moment a boat carrying construction workers floats by, overlaying the harem’s excursion boat which is being rowed by slaves. The cheesy background music comes from a nearby shopping mall.

Battlefields

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Kuwait, 2020

Video installation 8:43 min, loop, sound, 77.70 × 138 cm

Excerpt loop (1:58 min) from the video sequence of the Gulf Defense & Aerospace (GDA) 2019 international arms fair in Kuwait, showing visitors and a display of tanks from the First Gulf War, superimposed on an adapted version of the painting Bataille d’Héliopolis (1837) by Léon Cogniet. The painting shows a battle between French versus Ottoman and Egyptian troops during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign (1798–1801). 

HELLO MISTER, PICTURE WITH CAMEL?

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Tunisia, 2020

Video installation 16:14 min, loop, sound, 77.70 × 138 cm

Excerpt loop (1:15 min) from the video sequence of an abandoned Star Wars film set in the Tunisian desert with visiting tourists and local Bedouins offering souvenirs and camel rides, superimposed on an adapted version of the painting Le Sahara (1867) by Gustave Guillaumet. 

Bling Bling Baku Dystopia

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Baku, 2020

Video installation 2:50 min, loop, sound, 77.70 × 138 cm

Excerpt loop (1:19 min) from the video sequence of the Caucasian Baku oilfields and downtown Baku City (the full video installation version finishes with children playing in the ashes of a garbage dump fire next to the oilfields), superimposed on an adapted version of the engraving The Baku Petroleum Fields (1886) by William Simpson.

THE RE-ORIENTALISATION OF TAKSIM SQUARE

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Istanbul, 2019

Video installation 24:09 min, loop, sound, 77.70 × 138 cm

Excerpt loop (1:46 min) from the video sequence of a street scene on Taksim Square in Istanbul, with the construction site of a new mosque, superimposed on a velvet cushion from a souvenir shop depicting a 17th-century Orientalist Istanbul street scene behind the Hagia Sophia* by an unknown artist. Taksim Square was the epicentre of the Gezi protests in 2015 and could be called an ideological “battleground” between Republican-secular and authoritarian-Islamist Turkey. 

The Odalisque Sex Show

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Barcelona, 2020

Video installation 0:52 min, loop, sound, 31 × 55 cm

Video-sequence of the Bagdad sex-show theatre entrance in Barcelona, superimposed on an adapted version of the painting The Odalisque (1861) by Marià Fortuny. 

Restoration Work

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Tbilisi, 2020

Video installation 17:23 min. loop, sound, 77,70 x 138 cm

Excerpt loop (1.52 min) from a video sequence filmed in october 2020 during the restoration works of endangered Gudiashvili Square in the heart of Tbilisis historical centre. The sequence is superimposed on the painting “View of Tiflis”, 1874 by Pyotr Vereshchagin. One of the houses on Gudiashvili Square served as Imperial Russia’s headquarters for Caucasia in the 19th Century. Pyotr Vereshchagin was a Russian landscape painter who also accompanied Russian military campaigns, as for example during the Russo-Turkish war.

Original Paintings

The Tower of Babel, 1597

Unknown Flemish painter of the Lucas van Valckenborch school
Collection Kurpfälzisches Museum, Heidelberg

Promenade du Harem, 1856

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Collection Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA

Bataille d’Héliopolis, 1837

Léon Cogniet
Collection Château de Versailles

Le Sahara, 1867

Gustave Guillaumet
Collection Musée d’Orsay, Paris

The Baku Petroleum Fields, 1886

William Simpson
Creative commons

Street Scene from 17th-century Ottoman Istanbul

Unknown artist
Printed on a velvet cushion found in a souvenir shop in Istanbul

THE ODALISQUE (1861)

by Marià Fortuny
Collection Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

View of Tiflis, 1874
Pyotr Petrovich Vereshchagin