Artists' Film International, Touched

Touched is the opening exhibition of Artists' Film International. Organized annually since 2009 by the Whitechapel Gallery, Artists' Film International showcases artists working with film, video and animation, selected by 14 partner organizations around the world and presented over the course of a year at each venue. 

This is the first season Project 88 has participated, represented by Neha Choksi's Minds to Lose, 2008-2011 - a series of 8 collaged drawings based on the performance of Petting Zoo and the related video. Choksi has selected the following videos - Ana Gallardo's Estela 1946/2011, 2012; Kaia Hugin's Five Parts - A Motholic Mobble (Part 5), 2012 and Katarina Zdjelar's My Lifetime (Malaika), 2012, to show alongside her work. Something that Choksi strives for in her work, and which she looks for in others, is an equal mix of pleasure, anxiety, and comedy. Touching and being touched, in all its senses, seems to be something that can encompass those three valences. Minds to Lose certainly achieved a balance of the three. The selected videos all can be seen encompassing and enlarging on the semantic field of 'touch' - touching music, touching bodies, touching emotions and touching madness. 

-Neha Choksi 

Ana Gallardo (Argentina, 1958) is a self-taught artist. Since 1987 she has presented her work in solo and group exhibitions and participated in residencies and support grants for specific projects in Argentina and abroad. She also performs parallel curatorial practices, trying to create opportunities for exposure, reflection and construction of a context. (Selected for AFI 2013 by FundacionPROA, Buenos Aires, Argentina) 

Kaia Hugin (Norway, 1975) is a video artist who lives and works in Kolbotn, Norway. With a background in contemporary dance, she eventually moved onto contemporary art, and graduated with a MA in Fine Arts from Bergen National Academy of the Arts in 2011. Since her graduation, Hugin has exhibited extensively in both Norway and abroad, participating in group shows and festivals, as well as solo exhibitions. Hugin has established herself as a prominent artist in the Norwegian art scene. (Selected for AFI 2013 by KINOKINO Centre for Art and Film, Sandnes, Norway) 

Katarina Zdjelar (Belgrade, 1979) is an artist based in Rotterdam. She creates video pieces, sound pieces, book projects and different platforms for speculation, knowledge building and exchange. Her works explore notions of identity, authority and community. They revolve around individuals, who challenged by simultaneous inhabitation of different languages, perform themselves through practicing, remembering or reinventing themselves. (Selected for AFI 2013 by the Belgrade Cultural Centre, Serbia)