Statement

For the exhibition, I am presenting a video work (Promise) and a photograph (I Am In Love) 

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I am in love, 2021. 

Wood cut out 210 cm x 90 cm, wax, narcissus, hyacinth.   

Documentation: Carla Schleiffer  

I Am In Love is a photo documentation of a wood cut out from the artist’s video installation You Take me Across the Distance, 2021 Shedhalle Zurich. The installation dealt with queer memory, loss and desire through the AIDS epidemic. Whilst building the installation at Shedhalle we found this piece that turned out to be from an exhibition wall called ‘Problem gelöst? Geschichte(n) eines Virus’ Shedhalle 2019. Curator: Rayelle Niemann. This cut out became a meeting point of the same topic between several moments in time. I included it in my installation and carved on it “I Am In Love” a quote from queer artist and author Derek Jarman’s autobiographical work titled “At your own risk”. 

 

Promise, 2021.

8 min HD Video. 

The video Promise is a conversation between a ‘me’ and a ‘you’ that is multiple. The ‘you’ lived in the middle east over the last 70 years and has experienced the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, forming a central theme of the video work. In an uncanny manner, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980ies which we still find ourselves in, appears to anticipate today’s challenging times in more than one respect. In both moments, ‘the world’ as we know it, seems to come to an end.” What emerges, thus, is a parallel moment in which the notion of futurity is radically put into question. Our sense of the present, past and future appears to clash, as these temporalities begin to oscillate and interfere with one another. Marouf proposes the act of promising as a way to navigate the uncertainty of the future whilst remembering the past.