Press Kit (August 30th/31st, 2012) - Goldmann Public Relations ...

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NEWTOPIA: The State of Human Rights Contemporary Arts Exhibition in Mechelen and Brussels 01.09. – 10.12.2012 Recent solo exhibitions include: ...towards a blessed land of new promise, The Breeder, Athens (2009); What A Great Day, The Breeder, Athens (2008). Recent group exhibitions include: 1 st Kiev Biennial, Kiev (2012); Art in the Streets, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); Speech Matters, Danish Pavilion, 54 th Venice Biennial (2011); The Beautiful is just the first degree of terrible, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2009); Destroy Athens, 1 st Athens Biennial, Athens (2007); Anathena, DESTE foundation, Athens (2006). ALI FERZAT was born in 1951 in Hama, Syria. He lives and works in Damascus, Syria and in Kuwait City, Kuwait. Legendary Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat's drawings criticize bureaucracy, corruption, social injustices, and hypocrisy in the Middle East, in particular targeting the Syrian government and other autocracies in the region. His drawings, typically without captions, are renowned for their scathing criticism and biting humour, making Ferzat one of the most outspoken critics of human rights violations in the Arab World and one who has drawn the ire of several governments. Initially, his work depicted types rather than individuals but since the Syrian uprising began, Ferzat has been more direct in his caricatures, depicting actual figures including the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. In 2002 Ferzat was a recipient of the Prince Claus Award and in 2011 he was awarded both the Sakharov Prize for freedom of speech by the European Parliament and the Press Freedom Prize by Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde. He began drawing caricatures for the state-run daily al-Thawra in 1969. In the mid-1970s he moved to another government controlled daily, Tishreen. International recognition followed in 1980 when he won the first prize at the Intergraphic International Festival in Berlin. His exhibition in 1989 at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris brought on him a death threat from Saddam Hussein and a ban from Iraq, Jordan and Libya. In December 2000 Ferzat started publishing al-Domari (‘The Lamplighter’), which was the first independent periodical in Syria since the Baath Party came to power in 1963. In 2003, however, frequent government censorship and lack of funds forced Ferzat to close down al-Domari. For denouncing the corruption and human rights abuses of the Syrian Government, he was attacked in August 2011 by masked gunmen, who broke his hands as a warning. His work has been published in major international newspapers such as the New York Times, the Guardian and Le Monde and he also exhibitions internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Culture in Defiance: Continuing Traditions of Satire, Art and the Struggle for Freedom in Syria, Prince Claus Fund Gallery and Mica Gallery, London (2012). www.ali-ferzat.com 32
NEWTOPIA: The State of Human Rights Contemporary Arts Exhibition in Mechelen and Brussels 01.09. – 10.12.2012 ZIYAH GAFI! was born in 1980 in Sarajevo, in former Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina. He lives and works in Sarajevo. Ziyah Gafi! is considered one of the most talented, prolific and engaged of the younger generation documentary photographers. Although he was a child when the war in Bosnia erupted, the events deeply affected him and his family. Like all Bosnians, they were the media ‘subjects’ of an international humanitarian crisis and genocide. He turned to photography in order to experience events on ‘the other side’, not as victim but as one of the people involved in registering current affairs. His subsequent work is concerned with raising awareness to events in some of the world’s most conflicted and problematic hot spots, which are in the throes of transition, using photography as a tool to understand the circumstances that lead to political upheaval and the resulting human condition. Since 1999 Gafi! has been travelling extensively, covering major events in more than forty countries including Iraq, Kurdistan, Chechnya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine, both publishing and exhibiting his work internationally. In 2001, his reportage won the Ian Parry – The Sunday Times Magazine scholarship and the Second Prize at the World Press Photo contest. In 2002, he won the First and the Second Prize at World Press Photo, the Kodak annual award for young reporters at the festival Visa pour l’image and Special Mention by the HSBC foundation for photography. In 2003, Photo District News included him among 30 emerging world photographers and he won the Grand Prix Discovery of the Year at Les Rencontres d’Arles. In 2005, his work won the Giacomelli Memorial Fund Award and in 2006 he was nominated for UNICEF Photographer of the Year. In 2007 he received the Getty images grant for editorial photography He regularly contributes to publications such as Amica, la Repubblica, L’Espresso, Le Monde, Newsweek, The Telegraph Magazine, Time and Tank. www.ziyahgafic.ba GANZEER, who was born as Mohammed Fahmy in 1982 in Cairo, Egypt, where he lives and works. Ganzeer uses media such as street art, graphic design, illustration, questionnaires, graffiti and video as means of expression and communication. Ganzeer’s interests include, but are not limited to, commentary on current affairs, the human condition and what's next to come and of course recent Egyptian politics. He is considered one of the key figures of that part of the Egyptian art scene that is socially engaged and speaks up for public space and collective action. His murals and artistic activity on the streets of Cairo and his protest posters and graphics have made him one of the most important visual critics and activists in the Egyptian Revolution. The popularity of his graphic design work catapulted him into the contemporary art world in 2007 with his first solo show Everyday Heroes with the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo. This prompted his 33
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