20 21 Artists in Support of Human Rights Watch : Benefit Auction
Auction opens Mar 4 12:00 PM EST
For the past year, unprecedented challenges have exposed the deep fault lines of our society. Artists are so often at the forefront of movements for change seeking to repair these fault lines: truth-tellers grappling with society’s most prescient challenges, injustices, hopes, and joys. In response to this tragic and inspiring moment in history, we curated Artists in Support of Human Rights Watch 20 21: 41 works from established and emerging artists commenting on the current state of the world. A truly global, diverse group of artists deploy a variety of mediums, including photography, textile, sculpture, and more.
This benefit auction is organized by and facilitated by WILLAS contemporary and was made possible through special contributions by:
Benjamin Jaeger Art Advisory, Berlin, Germany; Ceval Omar, Oslo, Norway; CP Art Advisory ltd, London, UK; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, USA; Joan Blackman, Miami, USA; Flowers Gallery, London, UK; Pauline Benthede and Johan Wikner; Fotografiska, Stockholm; WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, South Africa; Formuesforvaltning, Oslo, Norway; Michelle Loukidis; The Lens Collective, Johannesburg, South Africa; Kirsti Svenning, Oslo Norway; Henrik Holm, Oslo Norway; Ravestijn Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Larsen Warner Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; Nabiha Khan-Giordano; Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago, USA; Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway.
Browse lots and place bids before the auction closes on Thursday, March 18th at 1:00pm EDT (6:00pm CET).
20 21 Art Works :
Alexandria Eregbu
Alexandria Eregbu is a multimedia artist, educator, curator, writer and visionary. On a fundamental level, Alexandria believes that art and expression are essential functions of community. As such, her work has been most dedicated to supporting creative experiences that uplift audiences engaging the arts.
Anahid Ghorbani
/nominated by Arno R. Minkkinen
-What gives you hope?
-To open the door of discussion about the oppression of women around the globe. Though my work may seem Iran-centric and specific, I hope that in the future it will be a source for expression direct toward shining a light on the struggle for the equality of women everywhere.
Anja Niemi
/Nominated by Vee Speers
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
When creating THE BLOW in 2019 I was not aware of the massive struggles ahead. I was thinking of fights in general and our ability to persevere and keep going. This ability does not feel irrelevant with the battles we have been facing this past year. It's about not giving up.
Annie Johansson
/Nominated by Cooper & Gorfer
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
"Fjellet Får De Aldri” (”They will Never Get the Mountain”) is a woven portrait of the mountain Engebøfjellet; a mountain that is the center of an environmentally controversial mining-project in Norway that has been alive since many years; a conflict that is still ongoing today in 2020. I came by the title in an image taken from newspaper clippings I found during my research, where a little boy is holding a demonstration placard stating those words in the small village Vevring where this mountain is situated.
Anton Corbijn
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
I always felt the photo shows a man within nature but this year it looks as if the man is imprisoned, no freedom. Thankfully he looks serene, shows endurance.
Arno Rafael Minkkinen
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
The earth belongs to all of us and to none of us. We are but equal tenants of the planet. We might be wise to bow before its grandeur with the humility of a water spider riding down a waterfall.
Axel Ahlsén
/Nominated by Jacob Felländer
- What gives you hope?
I find hope, especially in technology. In less than a year, humanity has developed a vaccine against COVID-19 and started to use it.
Bongiwe Phakathi
- In what way is ART a tool for activism?
Art shifts thinking, art demands questioning and rethinking social injustices. Art stimulates empathy and a desire to understand both the self and the other. Empathy is necessary when pushing and pulling for social justice.
Carlos Betancourt
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
I think perhaps this artwork can be more of a mechanism that activates hope, enthusiasm and optimism at any time.
Christian Houge
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
I chose the burning `Owl ` from my series Residence of Impermanence. A precious trophy animal that was set on fire as a performance and a ritual - to set the animal free while protesting on how we treat Nature in general. The same Nature we for some reason believed was permanent.
Cooper & Gorfer
-In what way is ART a tool for activism?
Art helps us to understand what it means to be human. It instigates thought and enables insight, not only by challenging the mind, but also by inviting the heart – and while understanding arises from the mind, it needs the heart to motivate action. It is specifically now that the riot of art, and the values we put forward, are so utterly important.
Farvash
/Nominated by Helene Schmitz
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
Paradox Tale of logic gate is a fictional tale looking at the foundation of trauma caused by separation, isolation, and adaptation. Voicing how self-control, self-censorship coexist with a sense of alienation in a citizen (Citizen 000 002). The work also weaves in how technology gives rise to mythmaking and becomes an act of warfare. 2020 is exceptional in that sense where all nations have been facing a collective sense of isolation, with a huge amount of confusion of not knowing what facts are real and how to adapt to this new reality. It has also been a year where western society has been shaken in its privilege and been forced to experience a new perspective and vulnerability.
[Photograph by Senay Behre, Sculpture, textile artwork and performance by Farvash]
Helene Schmitz
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
In my recent work I use classical landscape painting as my reference. I seek to capture the sublime beauty of the places I photograph with the traces and scars left by humankind. On one hand we adore the beauty of nature in an almost religious way. On the other hand, we exploit natural resources on a scale and pace Mother Earth has never witnessed before. I think “Aesthetics of Violence” reflects this doubleness.
Jacob Felländer
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
The recent Himalayan glacier disaster highlights climate change risks. My piece ”Give me your Word - Ama Dablam’ depicts both the magnificent beauty and tender fragility of nature.
Jacqueline Landvik
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
In this project, Jacqueline portrays her best friend Ceval Omar. Telling our own story and leading our own narrative, showing strength and vulnerability in times we feel unseen, couldn’t be more true for 2020. I see you and appreciate you and in return, I myself felt seen and appreciated.
James Nachtwey
-In what way is ART a tool for activism?
Art amplifies knowledge and opens up new pathways for comprehension that can galvanize thought into action.
Jan C. Schlegel
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
2020 was like the deceleration of our lives. It slowed us down and made us aware of what is really important to us. It removed all the daily “noise”. This picture is part of our series “Interruption” and depicts beauty, love, affection, and the surrender to nature.
Jeff Cowen
-In what way is ART a tool for activism?
The act of making art and the act of viewing art changes the consciousness of the human being.
Jeffrey James
/Nominated by Jeff Cowen
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
’Heredity’ is an abstract diptych that was created during a time when issues of environment and global pandemic were at the forefront of our consciousness. The condition of our environment and Covid 19 have been inextricably linked to human agency. The two forms of my sculpture share some similar features like a parent and child or the genetic characteristics between one virus and another. In both cases of genetic mutation human choice has played a significant role.
Jon Henry
/ Nominated by Nick Brandt
-In what way is ART a tool for activism?
The artist Charles White said it best, "An artist must bear a special responsibility. He must be accountable for the content of his work. And that work should reflect a deep, abiding concern for humanity." Visual art has always been an important way to connect a movement to the people and this is no different.
Jorge Mañes Rubio
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
This piece explores the ancestral idea of material culture being embedded with a life force, a spiritual quality that is activated through ceremonial exchange, ancestor worship and other forms of ritual. Made over several months of lockdown, I feel it reflects 2020 because it speaks about constant human renovation and the possibility of finding comfort in times of upheaval.
Julia Fullerton-Batten
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
COVID-19 was an unknown and turned the lives of every single person in the world upside down. Dealing with the unknown challenges was and remains a significant factor for all of us. I captured this complex time in the lives of people in my neighborhood in West London looking forlornly out of their windows into this changed world.
Kim Schwanhäußer
/ Nominated by Jan C Schlegel
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
(…) This picture of a meadow I took in my neighborhood just next to a frequented road, it hardly finds any recognition and usually everyone passes by without seeing its breathtaking beauty. It is full of life and we need to protect them because they carry the future of our lives.
Kjell Torriset
- In what way is ART a tool for activism?
Art is hope - and at best the work is invested with the belief that hope will conquer any resistance and bad faith thrown at it.
Lene Marie Fossen
[18.08.1986 - 22.10.2019] Lene Marie Fossen was an autodidact Norwegian photographer. She rejected the linear progression of time that forced her to go through puberty and stopped eating at the tender age of 10. She struggled with anorexia for the rest of her life. Fossen chose to be open about her disease and found her means of expression in photography.
Mandy Barker
-In what way is ART a tool for activism?
Art can be a powerful form of communication, providing a visual message when sometimes over-complicated statistics or articles are difficult to understand. I believe art can change people. It can also transcend the barrier of language. If at best my work can educate people to change their habits and lead them to positive action in tackling this ever increasing environmental problem - or at the very least cause people to think, then I will have achieved my aim.
Margo Trushina
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
“Through Oceanic Futures” is a contemplation of ice shapes and textures as planetary and human “bodies” which are intertwined in one another’s currents - be they ecological, political, or physical.
Matthias Olmeta
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
In Letters to my Grandchildren, the question of the future and the legacy left to future generations is central.
Rows of text are manually engraved in gold leaf behind the portraits of children. Those sacred texts and prayers are directly addressed to them.
Mohau Modisakeng
- In what way is ART a tool for activism?
(…) Art has the ability to question and disrupt the status quo. In that sense it can be one of the few tools that a degraded people can begin to gain a sense of themselves in the work that produce outside of the racial tropes of coloniality
Nadav Kander
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
It feels to me to be a gentle reminder of the many periods when one spent time with oneself. Time to contemplate and time to get to know yourself better. This can be seen as such a positive or very difficult. These times have been very personal. There can be no positive with out negatives too.
Nick Brandt
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
As most of us are aware, we are witness to a tragic sixth ‘great’ extinction - the Anthropocene. It is happening before our eyes. This photo was taken in 2015 but applies more than ever now.
The life-size panel of the group of elephants was placed in a location where they used to roam several decades ago. Meanwhile, the homeless people in the photo are also swept along by the relentless tide of ‘progress’.
I’m stating the obvious, but I guess it needs to keep being repeated: that in destroying nature, we will also ultimately destroy ourselves. A healthy natural world is essential for the well-being of all humanity, but most of all, for the rural poor, who typically, are those most impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.
However, instead of being angry and passive, let us be angry and active.
Events like this auction for HRW, multiplied by a thousand like this, means many can contribute to mitigating the damage and improving life on earth for all.
Olaf Heine
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
(…) The proud architectural self-expression, the optimistic promise of a brighter time, where everything seemed possible, epitomized in Niemeyer’s buildings, appears now more than ever like a utopian dream, especially considering recent trends of political and social division caused by ruthless and populist power brokers in Brazil and around the globe..
Richard Mosse
Photographer and filmmaker Richard Mosse focuses on war-torn regions, capturing the effects of conflict on landscapes and people in lush, cinematic images. Mosse situates his practice between documentary journalism and contemporary art practice, explaining that he seeks to represent the unrepresentable in order to “help us begin to describe, and thereby account for, what exists at the limits of human articulation.
Romina Ressia
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
I think masks have played an important role during the covid-19. The girl in the picture covers the wrong parts of the face, and beyond the humorous first impression it is a metaphor of society.
Scarlett Hooft Graafland
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
Five elderly women from the Aymara tribe are standing in the middle of the salt desert in their colourful traditional outfits. A sixth figure next to them seems to be erased. How long will all five remain present and visible? 2020 has been a year of solidarity with the older generation, the most vulnerable ones.
Shwan Dler Qaradaki
- In what way does your chosen piece reflect on 2020.
The Golden Wish reflects on the direction of the policies when it comes to the refugee problem. Who are those who seek refuge in our safe-havens? What injustice have they been subjected to before entering our safe zones, and who will speak their case?
Steinar Christensen
In a sense, Steinar Christensen’s work demonstrate his ability to open up discussions across genres and may be interpreted as comments on the current state of civilisation.
He demonstrated a unique ability to renew his artistic expression, yet his work primarily display traditional still lifes, incorporating both contemporary elements and art historical references.
Steve Schapiro
- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
John Lewis died in 2020 to enormous respect and loss throughout the country as a pioneer activist who, when I met him knew what he had to do in life, and then did it.
Theophilus Donoghue
/Nominated by Steve Schapiro
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
2020: a year of reflection and resistance
as time propels us onward one-way
an uncertain intersection looms.
Tiina Itkonen
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
Temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as in the rest of the planet. In Greenland, sea ice is disappearing at a rate of about 10% per decade. The Arctic is likely to be largely free of sea ice in summer by 2040. The culture of on-ice subsistence hunting will be hugely impacted, and, in the long-term future, lost forever.
Vee Speers
-In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?
Untitled #2 from Dystopia, portrays our close connection with nature and our equal attachment to the materialistic world. In this image, I reflect on the consequences of our individualistic ways and the detrimental impact this has on our planet.