Documenta 15:
Trauma, Solidarity and Chicken
Trauma, Solidarity and Chicken
FRIED CHICKEN SALON
with Hamja Ahsan & friends
monday
24 march
18:00-22.00
@
artisticresearchstudio
IJburglaan 1503
1087 KM Amsterdam
For Hamja Ahsan, being selected for documenta15 changed from a lifelong dream into a prolonged nightmare.
When he first visited Kassel in preparation for his documenta 15 exhibition, he was struck by how visibly muslim the city around the central headquarters of “the world’s most prestigious art event” were. He wondered: “Could the art world become a place of equal belonging to the streets surrounding it?”
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Documenta fifteen Kassel
© Frank Sperling
Hamja approached belonging by way of fried chicken. He created a series of speculative shop signs and satirical podcasts exploring fried chicken as a graphic style, as class struggle, as Empire and resistance, and as an intervention into art institutions, deviant racial and migrant identities; Fried Chicken as self-medication, demon and angel, disease and cure, war, and peace.
Instead of fostering equal belonging, however, documenta15 exposed unresolved issues in German society—state repression, institutional racism, xenophobia — and turned out to become one of the most traumatic experiences in the artist’s life, culminating in an ongoing lawsuit.
During this evening, Hamja will share his side of the story of documenta 15, addressing trauma, the continued role of (radical) fried chicken, and urgent questions of solidarity within and beyond the arts. We will serve vegan fried chicken oyster mushrooms :)
There will be limited places so please rsvp to team@artisticresearch.org if you want to attend !
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Documenta fifteen Kassel
© Frank Sperling
@
artisticresearchstudio
IJburglaan 1503
1087 KM Amsterdam
For Hamja Ahsan, being selected for documenta15 changed from a lifelong dream into a prolonged nightmare.
When he first visited Kassel in preparation for his documenta 15 exhibition, he was struck by how visibly muslim the city around the central headquarters of “the world’s most prestigious art event” were. He wondered: “Could the art world become a place of equal belonging to the streets surrounding it?”
Documenta fifteen Kassel
© Frank Sperling
Hamja approached belonging by way of fried chicken. He created a series of speculative shop signs and satirical podcasts exploring fried chicken as a graphic style, as class struggle, as Empire and resistance, and as an intervention into art institutions, deviant racial and migrant identities; Fried Chicken as self-medication, demon and angel, disease and cure, war, and peace.
Instead of fostering equal belonging, however, documenta15 exposed unresolved issues in German society—state repression, institutional racism, xenophobia — and turned out to become one of the most traumatic experiences in the artist’s life, culminating in an ongoing lawsuit.
During this evening, Hamja will share his side of the story of documenta 15, addressing trauma, the continued role of (radical) fried chicken, and urgent questions of solidarity within and beyond the arts. We will serve vegan fried chicken oyster mushrooms :)
There will be limited places so please rsvp to team@artisticresearch.org if you want to attend !
Documenta fifteen Kassel
© Frank Sperling
Theological Positions
on
Fried Chicken
is a video series by lumbung artist Hamja Ahsan. The series consists of broadcasts from a variety of Islamic theological perspectives from Sufism to Salafism, pro and anti Fried Chicken, that were streamed on the documenta fifteen youtube channel. The video series is part of an ongoing sequence of works based on Islamic social media.
shy radicals film
shy radicals book
White in conversation with Hamja
About the artist
Hamja Ahsan
Hamja Ahsan is a award-winning artist, writer, curator and activist based in London.
His art practice draws from the language and formats of Liberation movements. He is best known for the book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, recently made into a film, that envisions a utopic homeland for quiet, awkward and neurodiverse peoples. He was awarded the Grand Prize at Ljubljana Biennial 2019 for the art work Aspergistan Referendum based on this book. His art practice weaves inside and outside the artworld, progressive movements, muslim diasporic spaces, in the form of speaker-tours, coining critical languages, zine fairs, building archives and collections, as well as exhibition spaces.
He has presented art projects at the NY Art Book Fair at MOMA PS1; Tate Modern, London; Gwangju Biennale; Shanaakht festival, Karachi; and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Warsaw and was a resident artist at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in 2020–21. He is currently working on his 2nd book Radical Chicken about his Documenta 15 project on Halal Fried Chicken shops.
www.hamjaahsan.com
IG: @shyradicals
>SUPPORT Patreon: my tours, artwork, activism (from £1.56 a month)
IG: @chickencontemporary
> Radical Chicken (Documenta 15)
Liberation Fried Chicken Merchandise here