Iman Issa
Animal Masks for Tribunal Scene (2022)

Installation / Commissioned work

Dates
22.9.2022–12.2.2023

Location
Neue Galerie Graz
Graz

Series
A War in the Distance: Exhibition

Production specifics
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’22

With the generous support of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

With the friendly support of Gallery carlier | gebauer

Iman Issa’s installation is part of the ongoing series Surrogates, initiated in 2019. It is made up of a collection of displays, each of which is composed of elements extracted from a fictitious film set. Props, equipment, actors, locations, or other material once again assume a three-dimensional form. These elements are presented alongside a textual description of the main film sequence(s) in which they are featured. Together, they slowly unravel a newly devised narrative for a film titled Surrogates, a film about things, to be used, in order of appearance, by self or others, for touching upon larger, insidious, or different things

The present installation relates to a cinematic sequence that describes an actor performing the various roles of perpetrator, victim and lawyer in a courtroom scene, as described in the freestanding text panel. In the context of the other works in the exhibition, it can be read as a negotiation of how artists deal with structures of domination––in which they are perpetrators, victims, and judges.

Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective