AL BRAITHWAITE – ARTIST’S STATEMENT
‘The oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him.’
Sigmund Freud, 1913
 
We stand at an odd junction at the beginning of the 21st Century, with one signpost to our ancestors, and another signpost to our grandchildren. It is a struggle that affects every age, and every generation, and every tribal locality, but rarely has the struggle been played out so starkly on the world stage. Strings attached to the past and strings attached to the future give us very conflicting senses of identity and responsibility. And this is common to (all flanks of) the Terror War as it is to climate change, as it is to sustainable development: all the major issues of our age.

To edify such a junction, I wanted to conscript a very direct approach (‘oedipal syntax’) to my practice, to cut straight across the roadmap. Antique gilt European frames are occupied by modern (post-World War II) Middle Eastern figureheads. This performance is an experiment in a literal regime change to swap the grand oil paintings of European knights, dukes, kings and so on for more naïve and airy depictions of contemporary Middle Eastern powerbarons. In this way the mirrorseries playfully recolonizes history, seeing how it looks and feels when Daoud successfully slingshots a piece of rubble into the eye of Goliath. The experiment might relieve postcolonial stress, by symbolically shearing off some of the West’s tentacles, performing an attractive puncturing of European vanity. Within the new art regime, heaviness is worn lightly, walnutdom sledgehammered beautifully into a thousand smithereens.

My wish is to hold up a mirror to this junction.

AL BRAITHWAITE - BIOGRAPHY
b.1979
university 1999-2002
 
HISTORY
2010 HALL OF MIRRORS  XVA Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2009 MUSEUM NO. 1: HIZBOLLAH’S CAVIAR Rose Issa Projects, London, UK
2009 TERRORISM KILLS XVA Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2008 DESCENDED INTO HEAVEN Ground Zero, New York, USA
2007 FBI AND CHOCOLATE Penn Station, Baltimore, USA
2007 IN MEMORIAM Lipsum Gallery, Tronchetto, Venice, Italy
2007 SEANCE Arthouse, Homerton, London, UK
2006 ART IN MIND Brick Lane Gallery, London, UK
2006 DEEPER DEPRESSION Tarahan Azad Gallery Teheran, Iran
2006 DEEPER DEPRESSION Atbin Gallery Teheran Iran
2006 DEEPER DEPRESSION Zangar Gallery Teheran Iran
2005 TWO CITIES Orfali Gallery, Amman, Jordan
2005 OUT OF OUR ELEMENT 95 Canal & Chamber Gallery, New York, USA
2004 OFFSCREEN: AXIS OF EVIL Briggs Robinson Gallery, New York, USA
2004 OFFSCREEN: CURIOUS Galleri 27, Oslo, Norway
2004 OFFSCREEN: MISADVENTURE Alberto Vilar Gallery, London, UK
2004 HYPE II Hype Gallery, Paris, France
2004 INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS Abc Treehouse, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2004 DEEPRESSION II Azad Gallery, Teheran, Iran
2004 DEEPRESSION Atbin Gallery, Teheran, Iran
2004 HYPE Hype Gallery, London, UK
2003 THIRD EYE Orfali Gallery, Amman, Jordan
2003 OFFSCREEN: NEW BLOOD Orfali Gallery, Amman, Jordan
2003 OFFSCREEN: GULF Bait Muzna, Musqat, Oman
2002 OFFSCREEN: SAME HERE  Seyhoun Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2001 BLUE BLUE BLUE Frevd Gallery, UK
  
BOOKS
OFF SCREEN: Four Young Artists in the Middle East
Booth Clibborn Editions (2004)
June 2004; US, Europe, Asia.
Distributed by: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 1-86154-271-2