Zilberman Gallery will host Heba Y. Amin’s project exhibition “The Earth is an Imperfect Ellipsoid” from Wednesday 18 May through Saturday 2 July.
From the organizer:
“The Earth is an Imperfect Ellipsoid” is a land surveillance project that utilizes Al-Bakri’s “Kitab alMasalik wal-Mamalik” (Book of Roads and Kingdoms) -an eleventh-century geography text based on accounts of merchants, geologists and adventurers describing major trade routes in the Islamic empire- and converges it with the narratives of contemporary migration. The project looks specifically at current political constructs in Africa through land surveying and measuring techniques that have been employed along paths of migration for centuries. It attempts to place the contemporary migration story within the history of technological advancements and urban development. Through extensive road travel, cartographic research and landscape surveillance, the project visualizes these contemporary geographies and supplements them with constructed histories of the past.
The project confronts significant inventions in the history of construction and addresses the politics of landscape by utilizing the very tools used to build them. While better known as an instrument of measurement for urban construction, the ‘theodolite’ is also a precedent to telescopic rifles and other military weapons. Inherent in the tool itself are many troubling narratives, from the colonial construction of Africa to the militarized and violent tactics imposed on African migrants. Through the project, the notion of national sovereignty is explored in relation to the mobility of the body. The project unfolds as a photographic poem that portrays the perspectives of the landscape that bore witness to centuries of migratory traces.
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For more information, visit the official gallery page.
Tuesday – Friday / 11:00 – 19:30
Saturday / 12:00 – 19:00
zilberman@galerizilberman.com
+90 212 251 1214
Featured Image Source – 20° 52’ 35.45” N, 17° 3’ 32.08” W – Nouadhibou, Mauritania – B/W archival print, 16x16cm (2016)(Press Release)
İstiklal Cad. Mısır Apt. No:163 K.3 D.10 – Beyoğlu 34433
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