Yalda Afsah: Tourneur

Image: 2018, Video, 14:00 Min., Farbe, Ton. Courtesy of the artist

The film Tourneur documents a bullfight in the south of France and subtly comments on the unequal relationship between the young, adrenaline-fuelled participants and the physically superior, cornered animal. The unpredictability of the situation is heightened by the use of foam, which in this form of bullfighting makes it difficult for both the participants and the viewer to see and makes the encounter between man and animal in the middle of this abstract foam landscape seem like an alienation.

Proposed by Silke Schönfeld in the context of her solo exhibition You Can’t Make This Up at the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein at the Dortmunder U, Level 3 (12 Oct 2024–02 Feb 2025)

 

Yalda Afsah

In her works, the German-Iranian artist and filmmaker Yalda Afsah (*1983, Berlin) continuously explores the extent to which filmed space becomes a construction through cinematic means. This formal characteristic is reflected in the content and concept of Afsah's most recent works about various interspecies relationships that reveal an ambivalence between care and control, physical strength and broken will, instinct and manipulation. Departing from the documentary, her films and video installations seem to portray and fictionalise the human and animal protagonists in equal measure, capturing their symbiotic choreographies on screen. Afsah has presented her work at various exhibitions and film festivals, including Manifesta 13, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Berlinische Galerie, Institute of Contemporary Arts London and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. She had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein München, Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Between Bridges in Berlin and JOAN in Los Angeles.