10 + (-5) Commandments, Single-channel video, 28 minutes, Varied dimensions, Courtesy of the artists. (excerpt).
Alibaba Conundrum, 15 Commandments (The Origin of the Word), 2023, Inkjet on photo paper. Courtesy of Alibaba Conundrum.
Alibaba Conundrum, installation view, Griffin Art Projects Gallery (2023)
Dynamic Equilibrium Static Equilibrium, Color print on vinyl sticker, Inkjet on photo paper, 89” x 120”, Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Byron Dauncey.
Alibaba Conundrum, 'ɑːveI / AH-vay, 2022, Digital print on vinyl, 94” x 84”, Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Byron Dauncey.
10 + (-5) Commandments, Single-channel video, Varied dimensions, Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Byron Dauncey.
10 + (-5) Commandments, Single-channel video, Varied dimensions, Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Byron Dauncey.
(L) The Origin of the World, Inkjet on photo paper, wooden frame. 152 × 92 cm
Alibaba's Perspective, Aluminum tripod, wooden box, digital display, security camera. dimension varied.
(R) Alibaba's Perspective (detail), A visitor peers through the aperture of a camera obscura, expecting to see what the lens captures ahead. Instead, a security camera and digital display inside the box reveal the visitor’s own back, bending forward to look. A closed circuit of vision where looking is indistinguishable from being seen. The subject and image co-produce one another, suspended between desire, surveillance, and the recursive machinery of vision.
(L) Something Axiomatic Here (and Elsewhere), Illuminated Stereo digital image, LCD, 3D glasses dimensions varied. (R) Something Axiomatic Here (and Elsewhere) - detail
Once wearing the 3D glasses, the visitor experiences the text in a sculptural form, detached from the background image, hovering in front of it.
The text on the screen reads: "it has to be said that the image of the sum will have nothing to do with the sum of images."
It Flashes., 2022, Camera flash, micro computer, Varied dimensions. Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Byron Dauncey.
English (Triggerrrrrrrrrrrrring), 2022, Inkjet on photo paper, 60” x 80”, Courtesy of the artists. Photo by Byron Dauncey.
Alibaba Conundrum, installation view, Griffin Art Projects Gallery (2023)
Ave is to Have as Hail is to Hell
Polished copper plate, ammonia, copper oxide. 61 × 30 cm.
3D View of the Exhibition Alibaba Conundrum at the Griffin Art Projects (2023).
Alibaba Conundrum
Griffin Art Projects (2023).
The project critically examines how different ways of seeing, and subsequently those of saying, are manufactured today through the hegemony of the English language, globally conditioning the possibilities of thinking. It also explores how the link between the socio-economic structures of neoliberalism, Christian theology and the global institution of art (with its English grammar) maintains the contemporary habitus of thinking through diverse regimes of image production and media cybernetics.
In the contemporary world, one is either marked and affected by voicing/responding to the speaking of English, or one is equally left unmarked and still affected by the inability to voice that speaking. With the omnipresence of English, every peripheral language (vis-à-vis English) attempting to connect to the world becomes a torsion of English. Therefore, one is either an English-speaking-thinking subject or one is simply defined as the negation of it. In other words, every English-speaking subject is also a non-English-speaking subject, and every non-English speaking subject is definitely an English-speaking subject. The problem is the extremely uneven and combined struggle for recognition between the two, the asymmetrical proportion of this dialectic. It is within this context that Alibaba Conundrum is a performer of the negation of the negation, a syntax, a grammar attempting to counter-symbolize the grammar of the institution of art. In a word, Alibaba Conundrum is an It.
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The exhibition consisted of an installation showcasing multimedia works, including video, sculpture, sound-installation, wallpaper, and a series of image-based objects. This exhibition was conceived through two interrelated components, a 28-minute video, titled “10+(-5) Commandments” and a constellation of images and objects that all can be perceived as derivatives of the video. What contextualized the constellation presented in the second exhibition hall was the video “10+(-5) Commandments”, which itself is a construction from another context, that is archive and history.
Alibaba Conundrum is an artistic group and an ongoing project formed by Vancouver-based artists Ali Ahadi and Babak Golkar.