Rheim Alkadhi
APT8
Born 1973, United States/Iraq
Currently works in Stuttgart, Germany
Rheim Alkadhi's practice investigates the potential of art as a public platform rather than a private process, allowing her to develop new ways of looking at society and relating to the world. For APT8, these interests are developed through a performance entitled The Eye Theatre Closes Its Doors, and Opens Them Again 2015. She draws inspiration from the Living Newspaper, a form of dramatic production based on current social and political events that developed in the 1930s in the United States. As a member of the Iraqi diaspora, she is dependent on newspapers for information of her homeland and simultaneously deeply aware that they are not impartial news sources. Using images that the artist has taken and created in the Persian Gulf, Palestine, and North Africa, the performance will focus on the inherent theatricality that exists within photography. This theatricality — or possibility for exaggeration — also extends to our retinas, raising questions on our reliance on vision as a vehicle for perceiving the world.
Rheim Alkadhi / USA/Iraq b.1973 / The Eye Theatre Closes Its Doors, and Opens Them Again 2015 / Performative lecture and mixed media installation / © and image courtesy: Rheim Alkadhi