March 29-April 15, 2006

Counter Gallery, London, and touring to The Galleries Show, Extracity, Antwerp, April 20-25, 2006

A series of week-long exhibitions curated by Bidoun in which artists were given carte blanche not only in terms of content, but are also free to behave as artists or curators in absentia.

Week 1: Shirin Aliabadi & Farhad Moshiri: OPERATION SUPERMARKET

A series of posters alongside a small number of supermarket commodities, mixing, in the words of the artists, “poetry with detergent”. The emphasis here is on the commodification of mainstream media traits of the Middle East, but also on a wry parody of the mythical hopes that are still pinned on the commodity itself as a capitalist agent for change.

Week 2: Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige: THE LOST FILM

An absorbing travel narrative recounting the search for a lost film document, alongside an extract from a video by filmmaker and researcher Akram Zaatari, This Day, which peruses persistent Orientalist patterns through the history of desert photography.

Week 3: Faouzi Rouissi

A writer born in Algiers and barely known in the West, Rouissi is appreciated in local circles for his outspoken style and undaunted prose. Living in exile in Paris since 1994, Rouissi travels widely, publishing a wide array of publications ranging from travel guidebooks to critical anthologies of land art, all in his native Kabyli. Here, Rouissi proposes a selection of paintings and drawings focusing on what he terms “the contagious poetics of envy”. His selection includes a work by the SHAHRZAD collective, from the series I Love You But I Don’t Trust You Anymore (2004), plus painter Rachid Izdaman’s Victimes d’extrêmes remords (2005), and photographic works by Solmaz Shahbazi.

With thanks to Carl Freedman and Jo Stella-Sawicka from Counter Gallery.