Artists: Monia Ben Hamouda and Michele Gabriele
Exhibition title: It won’t only kill you, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying
Venue: OJ Art Space, Istanbul, Turkey
Date: May 24 – June 10, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and OJ Art Space, Istanbul
When things die we realize what they once were,
One ring of smoke pulsating in space
One moon hanging in the air of a stuffy night on the cusp of nothing
Apex vitality
Trash collectors screamlaugh like demons behind the rusting black gate over the rumble of
their V8s over their hand-soldered Cumbia FM radio, riding the tendrilled cloud of curdled
milk and mildew beer and rainsoaked oil spattered cardboard, rotting in the sunlight
This arid mudpatch once birthed amphibianism
Now we trample orchids dilated flinching under explosions curled fetal digging shallow
holes, hands clinched, pants-pissing screaming power-hungry control-mad sunburning on
the dented roof of an old desert Audi
Our moment might soon be over
I want to lose myself forever in a sublime haze of loud distracting life-affirming anything
A shaky pistol emerging from a shadow
Dogs disappear out windows
Forceful sliding glass doors guillotining tails off of common lizards
Boiled grey meat, recreational banging, awaiting final bipedal opi
Draw an x over the vein on your temple with a black marker
Immolate entertainment
A deep scar scraped into the lateral line of your Led Zeppelin red convertible, Mardi Gras
beads asunder, the taste of collegiate decadence propelling our tongues
A bag of orange rocks shattered into crude clay sludge
Lost without our stupid thin and self-reflective technology in the suffocating bearhug of
nature’s icy indifference, crying, frozen, desperate phonecalls to Mom go to voicemail
No theatre, no lights, a thing was and is now not, against rationality, comprehensive, inert
Also there is no way to know things until we learn them
Things like the slow lunging beauty of nighttime, glistening, revealing itself thin and rich
and layered like the veiny tonality of bat wings
The lèse-majesté of the horizon, the sunset
Every pore is a temple!
What are we even scared of?
Clumped in a flesh heap in the bottom of a mud covered shower expelling ions
An edge of foam between wet and dry sand where the base of all life forms.
A frothy smelly mustard perfect line, where the means and ends of our bones and hopes
are picked apart by crustaceans
What are we waiting for?
– Andrew Birk, “What are we waiting for?”, Special Contrubution, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, born in Milan in 1991, lives and works between Milan, Helsinki and Tunisi. Her selected exhibitions include; “H O P E”, curated by New Scenario , Dresden DE; “Miranda”, solo show, curated by PANE project, Milan IT and “You would like that we were not here. But we are too emotionally absorbed by the homesickness of places that we’ll see only from the windows of our Bentleys”, curated by Michele Gabriele, Milan IT. http://moniabenhamouda.tumblr.com/
Michele Gabriele, born in 1983, lives and works in Milan. His selected exhibitions include; “The Missing Link”, Fondazione Pini / 77, Milan IT; “Body Holes” By New Scenario, Berlin Biennale 9th, Berlin DE and “They are standing there, under the weather, totally waterproof or comepletely wet”, Konstanet, Kunstihoone Art All, Tallinn EW. http://michelegabriele.tumblr.com/
Michele Gabriele, TurboPizza (Best and Worst of me), 2017
Michele Gabriele, TurboPizza (Best and Worst of me), 2017 (detail)
Michele Gabriele, TurboPizza (Best and Worst of me), 2017 (detail)
Michele Gabriele, TurboPizza (Best and Worst of me), 2017 (detail)
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini1 (The Right Distance), 2017
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini1 (The Right Distance), 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Please Wake Up Subtitle, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Please Wake Up Subtitle, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Sad Music Playing Subtitle, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Sad Music Playing Subtitle, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Sad Music Playing Subtitle, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, How She Articulates Loss, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda & Michele Gabriele, TORCHES (It won’t only kill you, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying), 2017
Michele Gabriele, The Anteater (No One Needs to Talk with this Old Ugly Bitch), 2017
Michele Gabriele, The Anteater (No One Needs to Talk with this Old Ugly Bitch), 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Wait Right Here, I’ll be back in the Morning, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Hunter I, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Hunter I, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Hunter III, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Hunter III, 2017, (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda & Michele Gabriele, TORCHES (It won’t only kill you, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying), 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda & Michele Gabriele, TORCHES (It won’t only kill you, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying), 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Dog I, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Holding Hands as a Cup, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Holding Hands as a Cup, 2017 (detail)
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini3 (Gimme a Try), 2017
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini3 (Gimme a Try), 2017 (detail)
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini3 (Gimme a Try), 2017; Cinghialini2 (Too Old to Play Hide-and-Seek), 2017
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini2 (Too Old to Play Hide-and-Seek), 2017
Michele Gabriele, Cinghialini2 (Too Old to Play Hide-and-Seek), 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Dog II, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Dog II, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Hunter IV, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Still Broken, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Still Broken, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Still Broken, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Still Broken, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda & Michele Gabriele, It won’t only kill you, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying, 2017
Monia Ben Hamouda, Turn Bomb Craters into Swimming Pools, 2017 (detail)
Monia Ben Hamouda, Turn Bomb Craters into Swimming Pools, 2017