Current

Artissima 2024
Turin

1 – 3 November 2024

Frieze London
D16
9 – 13 October 2024

Ali Eyal & David Horvitz
A new garden from old wounds
11 SEP - 9 NOV 2024


CONTACT


Photo by Nicolas Wefers

The Blue Ink Pocket, and. 2022

Video work
Duration: approx. 11 Min.
Language: Arabic and with english subtitles.

Editor and camera operator: Issac Lythgoe 
Consulting editor: Mary Jirmanus Saba 
Sound mix : Ernst Karel
​Colorist: Belal Hibri



In the village we managed to retrieve from a number of different houses the lost pieces of the artist's roving duplicates. They wanted to send these pieces to local museums.

The village artist drew copies of himself with complicated stories that he shared in the galleries from around the world, since he couldn't travel with his duplicates because of the migration of furniture, friends, and trees. This was both an artistic style and his position towards the politics that obstruct the movement of the artist with his work and his western audience. He had a group of drawings of the strongest passports from around the world that he accomplished with cheap paints on cigarette boxes. He formed with each story a duplicate of himself where he placed a passport in the pocket of the drawn shirt. This copy of “The Blue Ink Pocket” is the only one we possess.

Aside from an old letter that the artist wrote in 2022 for a collective he joined, nothing remains except the signature and the phrase “Good luck.” The words were consumed by the farm's larvae in the basement. But it's possible for you to see the traces of the pen's power on the back of the paper, and you read:

What if you were an artist in the Battle of Karbala? What then? This was the first question that was brought up in our Sada lectures by a distant international artist through Skype in an old building. On the way to the lecture, we navigated car bombs. When we arrived, our eyes were puffed up as though from jungle mosquitos. While the question was intriguing, we never found an answer as to how to document the Battle of Karbala artistically. Our ages ranged from fifteen to sixteen, a small group from the art institute, with an additional group from the Baghdad university’s art department. There wasn’t an advanced level of art education, for this reason, this group was a small advanced school for Baghdad’s emerging artists.
When I joined art residencies, they both destroyed the chains of traditional academic training that I had been through at the Institute of Fine Arts.
With Sada, I was introduced to video and other experimental forms. In Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, I decided to return to painting, in a way critical to the traditional forms. I stopped drawing and painting for years before joining the artistic group in Beirut. All because the person who had taught me painting...here a piece of the text is incomprehensible.
I realized that painting could bring me to courtroom drawings, which are rapidly accomplished, paintings that double as tools of witness, and for this reason sometimes the outlines connect and sometimes they do not.
Don’t you see this canvas as a shroud or a curtain that covers the painting-in-hiding.
The painting’s wood contains the tree’s voice, cast out like me from far off forests.
Sometimes I work directly without use of wood or an outer frame, so it gives freedom to the canvas to take a ghost shape. Painting and drawing contain a lot of baggage, but this is also its power. This medium fits the life of the immigrant, since three exhibitions fit in one piece of luggage.

Good Luck Ali Eyal

We apologize for only delivering this work now... We couldn’t bear to be separated from it so soon after its return.

We stumbled upon the left ear inside the bag of rice.
We retrieved the painting of the head from side the abandoned storage.
The right year from under the stairs.
The shoulders and the hands we found inside the jacket
And we found the feet stuffed inside the cotton.




Artworks

Look what I remember, a new garden from old wounds and Just a group school photo, but.. Tonight’s Programmem is Painting Size 80x60cm.Paper, pen, map in a pocket and my mom surprised me to show me a 2000 calendar, but what did I show my mom? The Blue Ink Pocket? and An Indefinite appearance or two walls and 6x9 doesn’t fit everything and Don't let the beautiful colors fool you, who would draw Goofy inside the rooms of grownups? And Where do the walls of the museum go when they are forgotten? Where does a thought go when it's forgotten? Autumn Solo Show. Berlin's drawing's pad. No Part Of This Book May Be Reproduced, In Any Way, By Photocopying, Recording, Or Otherwise, Except With The Prior Written Consent Of The Publisher, and  


Solo Shows


From the creases of my eyelid, In the head's sunrise and In the head's dusk there’s retrieving an Obscured Present/Presence


Text-Reviews    Publication


Ali Eyal (b.1994) is an artist working with painting, drawing, and video to explore the relationships between personal history, transitory memories, politics, and identity. Eyal is currently featured in Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023). Eyal's solo exhibitions include In the Head's Sunrise, Brief Histories, New York (2023); In the Head's Dusk, SAW Gallery, Ottawa (2023). Recent group exhibitions include, Is It Morning for You Yet?, the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2023); Surviving the Long Wars: Reckon and Reimagine, Chicago Cultural Center (2023); Documenta 15, Kassel (2022); Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011, MoMA PS1, New York (2020); How to Reappear: Through the quivering leaves of independent publishing, Beirut Art Center, Lebanon (2019). Eyal’s video work is included in the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil: Memory is an Edition Station, São Paulo (forthcoming October 2023); Rencontres Internationales, Paris; VITRINE x Kino Screenings, London; Sharjah Film Platform, Sharjah Art Foundation; and Cairo Video Festival, Medrar, Cairo. His works are in the collection of Kadist, Paris; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. Eyal earned an undergraduate degree from the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad (2015), he currently lives and works in Los Angeles.






PORTFOLIO PDF




Born in 1994 in Baghdad, Iraq. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA

Education

  • 2016 - 2017  | HWP/Home Workspace, Independent Study Program, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon.
  • 2011 - 2015   | Diploma, Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad.

Solo Exhibitions 

2024
  • Retrieving an Obscured Present/Presence, Bellyman, LA, US.
  • From the Creases of my Eyelid, The Quebec City BiennIal, Quebec, CA
2022
Selected Group Exhibitions

2024
  • Undoing Images I, Akademie der künste, Colonge, DE
  • A new garden from old wounds, ChertLüdde, Berlin, DE.
  • Display, Ehrlich Steinberg, LA, US.
  • Babel, Sara’s Dukunsthalle, NYC.
  • Hope Dies Last, Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto, CA. 
  • The David Hammons, Frieze show, curated by Suzy Halajian, LA, US. 
  • Crystal Clear, Bayt AlMamzar, Dubai, UAE.

2023
  • 4.5 Billion Years, Brief Histories, NYC, US.
  • Surviving the Long Wars, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, US.
  • Archival Assebly #2 at the Betonhalle, silent green, Berlin، curated by Ala Youins and Maha Maamoun. How to know what's really happening. Berlin, DE.
  • 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil | "Memory is an Editing Station"
  • 15th Sharjah Biennale, curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, U.A.E.
2022 
  •  The 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, US.
  • Documenta 15 - Sada [regroup], Kassel, DE. ​
  • Crossings: Itineraries of Encounter, Blackwood Gallery. Toronto, CA.
  • How to maneuver: Shape-shifting texts and other publishing tactics, isdaT — Institute of arts and design of Toulouse. Curated by Ala Youins and Maha Maamoun | Toulouse, FR
2021
  • This Is Not Lebanon, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Curated by Matthias Lilienthal, Rabih Mroué, Christine Thomé (Ashkal Alwan), Anna Wagner (Künstlerhaus Mousonturm), Jaan Bossier, Uwe Dierksen, Christian Hommel (Ensemble Modern). Kuratorische Mitarbeit: Friederike Kötter | Frankfurt, DE.
  • Hamds, The Akademie der Künste. Curated by MADHUSREE DUTTA, ALA YOUNIS  | Cologne, DE .      

2020
  • Online screening. Aashra, Ashkal Alwan. Curated by Ashkal Alwan | Beirut, LB
  • Online exhibition. Triennale Tres Pesos, Mexico, MX City.
  • Online exhibtion. Viral Self-Portraits, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova | +MSUM, Slovenia, LJU
  • How to reappear: Through the quivering leaves of independent publishing, MMAG Foundation, Amman, JO
2019
  • How to maneuver: Shape-shifting texts and other publishing tactics, Warehouse 421, Abut Dhabi, UE, curated by Kayfa ta, Ala Youins and Maha Maamoun.
  • Screening, Kino, Bermondsey as part of VITRINE x Kino Screenings. London, UK ​
  • Screening, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin video library at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Berlin, DU
  • ​Screening, theme Less, time less, discipline less, form less. The James Black Gallery, Mexico, MX City.
  • Collective exhibition, Beirut Art Center. touché! (gestures, movement, action), Beirut, LB
  • Screening, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin video library
  • Screening, I am BP, King of Exploitation, King of Injustice, P21 Gallery, London, UK
  • Screening, Sharjah Film Platform, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UE

2018  
  • Screening, Immaterial Collection Forum IV: States of Being, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, LB
2017 
  • ​Audio piece, Collective Task, Baghdad, Baghdad, IQ
  • Open Studio, HWP 2016-17, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, LB

2015  
  • TARKIB Installation Exhibition, Baghdad, IQ
  • Group Show, 1010Hall The ARt House, Nicosia, CY
  • Build Peace conference, Nicosia, CY
  • 6th FIVAC, International Video Art Festival, Camaguey, CU.

2013 
  • Screening, Cairo Video Festival, Medrar, Cairo, EG
  • Al-Mutanabbi Street exhibition, Baghdad, IQ
  • ​Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. US.                        
  • Screening, Iraqi Independent Film Center, Baghdad, IQ

2011
  • Nakhla Gallery, Baghdad, IQ

Collections

2022

  • Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, FR 













Ali Eyal 2024 ​© All Rights Reserved​