Disruption as Rapture
Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969, Lahore, Pakistan)
2015
Single-channel video animation with sound
10 minutes, 7 seconds
Courtesy of the artist
Trained at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, and the Rhode Island School of Design, Shahzia Sikander creates drawings, paintings, and installations based on imagery often found in intricately layered Persian and Mughal manuscript paintings. In Disruption as Rapture, she uses animation to isolate, multiply, and set in motion selected folios of an eighteenth-century Gulshan-i Ishq (Garden of Love) manuscript. The Gulshan-i Ishq, written in 1657â58 by Nusrati, court poet to Sultan Ali Adil Shah II of Bijapur, recounts a classic tale of star-crossed lovers who must face daunting challenges and painful separation before they can unite. This tale of migration, longing, and final union in a world of lush gardens and magical beings serves as an allegory for the soulâs search for the divine.
Shock of Time
Sun Xun (b. 1980, Fuxin, China)
2006
Single-channel video animation with sound
5 minutes, 29 seconds
Courtesy of the artist
Sun Xun builds his animations frame by frame through a painstaking process of drawing and erasing on surfaces that range from sheets of old newspapers to entire walls. In Shock of Time, words form the background for the machinations of the âmagician,â a central figure in many of Sunâs works. Moving across and through yellowing Chinese newspapers from the 1950s and 1960s, the magician weaves his talesâor liesâabout history. The filmâs simplicity and playfulness belie the artistâs more cynical commentary on the way events are remembered in different historical contexts.
The Fourth Stage
Ahmad Ghossein (b. 1981, Beirut, Lebanon)
2015
Single-channel video with sound
37 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
Ahmad Ghossein has a multidisciplinary practice spanning film, photography, and installation art, creating a body of work driven by personal experience. He collects facts, documents, and found footage, transforming them into work that reflects his interest in individual human experiences and shared political realities. The Fourth Stage weaves a complex and unlikely union of illusion and myth between the three worlds: cinema, magic, and the changing landscape of southern Lebanon. Within a dystopian narrative, Ghossein recalls the disappearance of a famous magician and ventriloquist from his childhood.
Superposition
Moon Kyungwon (b. 1969, Seoul, South Korea)
2009
Single-channel video with sound
13 minutes, 51 seconds
Courtesy of the artist
Educated at both the California Institute of the Arts and Yonsei University, Moon Kyungwon focuses on human interaction with natural landscapes and the residues of inhabited space. Superposition is an imaginary documentation of Kimusa, a military site in Seoul with a controversial history spanning the countryâs colonial and authoritarian periods. Nearly a decade ago and after eliciting much public debate, Kimusa was transformed into a space for art and culture. Superposition explores the significance of this place and its existence through different social and political contexts.
The Island
Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976, Saigon, Vietnam)
2017
Single-channel video with sound
42 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
Tuan Andrew Nguyenâs work questions the individualâs relationship to history, trauma, nationhood, and displacement, often exploring the body as a site of resistance in public space. Featured at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, The Island was shot on the Malaysian island Pulau Bidong, which was home to the largest and longest-operating refugee camp after the Vietnam War. The island housed 250,000 people from 1978â91, including Nguyen and his family. While the island is overgrown today, residue of its past can be found in crumbling buildings and relics. The film is set in a dystopian future where the last two people on earth inhabit the island, weaving together historic footage from Pulau Bidongâs past with this imagined narrative.