Rheim Alkadhi


Rheim Alkadhi is a visual artist based in Berlin; works internationally.Alkadhi operates under contemporary conditions in alternating geographical contexts, circumscribed by objects, images, and texts, via digital media, interactions in public space, and intimate person-to-person contact. "With multiple migratory belongings/trajectories in regions of imposed geopolitical conflict, the perception of authoritarian, imperial, colonial dominance is magnified in everyday life. Thus, the work registers a nonconforming emancipatory feminist existence under such planetary conditions, using mediums of language, artifacts of material reality, and living interactions."

Biography

Lived first in Benghazi, Libya, then transnationally between Baghdad and New England; raised by an American mother and an Iraqi father; attended public school in Iraq until the family returned to the United States at the start of the Iran–Iraq War.

Selected Projects

Research in various provinces of Iraq during April 2019 resulted in many of the elements featured in the ongoing framework and exhibition "Majnoon Field".
In 2018, participation in the experimental walking art school Spring Sessions across Jordan; later that year, the public staging at migrant-run OBI market in Berlin, based on conversations and ongoing relationships initiated in that context. Displayed objects include: mock-up of geo-political extraction field; large block of Styrofoam for flotation; seven shoe fragments collected along migration routes; refugee housing in Europe for a family of eight; patterned blanket; eye of a needle.
In 2017, "Hairs of the Oppressed" was featured at once resolved and ongoing; a sculpture concept accompanied by the text "Script for Eleven Hairs" at Autonomes Cultur Centrum, Weimar. Rotating authorial concept acknowledges the collaborative emancipatory politics/method of Theatre of the Oppressed, on which this piece is based.
In 2016, "Night Taxi", a multimedia suite of documents outlined milliseconds leading up to the crossing of an arbitrary geographical border.
Between 2015 and 2016, live presentations included "Eye Theatre Closes Its Doors and Opens Them Again", commissioned for the Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia, and "Köln Phantasm" developed and performed while a fellow in visual art at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.
In 2014 she developed the project "Communications From the Field of Contact " during her residency at the Sharjah Art Foundation.
In 2012 she was a temporary member of a household of women in the West Bank village of Jam'ain in Palestine, where she developed her project "Collective Knotting Together of Hairs" with the local Women's Association, with Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah, and with Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem.
In 2012 she was artist in residence at Darat al Funun in Amman via the initiative of Rijin Sahakian and Sada for Contemporary Iraqi Art.
In 2011 she was in residence at Dar al Ma'mun in Tassoultante and then independent of institutional assistance in the village of Tahannaout, Al Haouz Province.
In 2010 she spent one month in Itaewon, Seoul with the artist-run space DoBaeBacsa. In 2010 she was artist in residence at PØST in Los Angeles.
In 2009 she had a residency at Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, where she gathered material for the limited edition artist book "Destroyed in Baghdad / Repaired in Cairo: A Viewer's Manual to a Temporary Art Practice in the Auto Mechanics District". In 2009 she printed the limited edition artist book "Post Cards From the Clandestine Troupe".
Her work was shown at the 12th Sharjah Biennial, at the New Museum, in the 2012 Jerusalem Show, at dOCUMENTA, and in the 2010 Cairo Biennial.
In 2010 she received a grant from Art Matters and the Center for Cultural Innovation. In 2009 she was awarded a Mid-Career Artist Fellowship from the California Community Foundation. In 2008 she received a grant from the Arab Fund for Art and Culture. In 1990 she received an award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and from 1990 to 1994 the Musicfest award for young artists.

Selected Exhibitions