NERO MAGAZINE » Dina Danish Re-Play: Back in 10 Minutes

Dina Danish Re-Play: Back in 10 Minutes

May 19 – July 27, 2012

SpazioA – Via Amati, 13 – Pistoia

For Re-Play: Back in 10 Minutes,Dina Danish will present two bodies of work, which stem from the notion of what it means to re-produce, recreate and mimic one’s own works.

In 2011, Danish created a video, Halim: The Dark Whistling Nightingale. In the video, using her hand and voice, Danish interprets a found video in which Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez performs a tragic love story (Qareat Al Fingan). Danish investigates the moment in which Halim, irritated by the audience’s whistling, scratches his head and stops performing. His romantic stage persona collapses when he tries to whistle back at the audience.

Only recently and after conducting extensive research does Danish stumble upon footage and evidence regarding this specific incident making her come closer to what might have really taken place during this performance. Thus, Danish will present a new body of work reinterpreting and recreating this specific incident.

The work ranges from the mysterious suit, the audience members with referee whistles, STOP IT! to the singer and the poet.

The second body of work addresses the values and concerns towards standardization in regards to the specificity of form, size and color. Machines excel in standardizing and systematically re-producing perfect, identical objects.

In 2008, Dina Danish created Back in 10 Minutes. Composed of a large square table top with the words ‘back in 10 minutes’ painted onto it, the work pushed the form of the commonly used post-it note into a large 3-D object, drawing attention to the artist’s handwriting and the casual practice of announcing absence.

This painting together with another depicting a blank sheet of standard US legal paper were given to Danish’s friend and mentor in San Francisco, which resulted in an ongoing conversation between the two around the idea of reproducing these works and standardization in the artistic process. In recreating some of her earlier pieces Danish uses this as a starting point to this exhibition to navigate the use of mimicry in contrast with recreating by simply copying with her own hand.

Dina Danish (born in Paris, 1981; lives and works in Amsterdam) studied at the American University in Cairo, Egypt and received a MFA at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA.

She took part in exhibitions including Kunsthall Oslo, SFMOMA in San Francisco, CIC in Cairo in collaboration with Kunsthalle Bern and performed Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonata at the Cairo Pavilion of the Amsterdam Biennial.

She has participated in solo exhibitions including: Shmina Shmanish, 2011, Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, A Matter of Time, 2011, Barbara Seiler Galerie, Zurich. Most recently she took part in the group exhibition Two Versions of The Imaginary, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam and A Brand New Baby Carriage standing there on the Porch, Barbara Seiler Galerie, Zurich.

She has received awards such as “Illy Present Future” award at Artissima 18, “Barclay Simpson Award”, San Francisco, and was a finalist for “SECA Art Award” at SFMOMA. Residencies she has taken part in include Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; Fondazione Spinola Banna Per L’Arte, Turin, and PiST///, Istanbul.

Image above: Dina Danish, Re -Play: Back in 10 Minutes, 2012