20 March - 30 May 2010
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23 January - 14 March 2010
MY Public Space / “… to find emptiness in cityscapes”
MY Public Space / "...to find emptiness in cityscapes" is an exhibition that offers a platform to artists whose work appropriates or scans the total emptiness of public spaces in such a way as to confer new meaning on the apparently ordinary. By doing so, it may inspire people to approach public (but nevertheless highly personal) space in a new – more personal, critical and creative – way.
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17 October - 03 January 2010
GDR: Ostalgia & Paranoia
‘As far as I know it comes into force now... with immediate effect (...) permanent emigration can take place via all GDR border crossings to the FRG and West Berlin.’
These words by Politburo member Schabowski led, probably unintentionally, to one of the most seminal moments in recent history: the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years ago. It was the deathblow that ended a long process of decline. It marked the downfall of a bankrupt system that was founded on fear, telephone tapping and mass surveillance, but which had become customary to the inhabitants of this bizarre social Utopia. Gemak looks at life before and after the Wende, through an exhibition with work by Dora García and Maix Mayer, and a programme of activities featuring lectures and debate.
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27 June - 27 September 2009
Entering Europe
The ramshackle little boat carrying photographer Joël van Houdt and 28 illegal immigrants just managed to complete its crossing from Morocco to the Spanish island of Lanzarote. Van Houdt has produced a penetrating photo report on the experiences of one Moroccan, called Mohamed, as he tries to escape what he sees as a dead-end life in his native land and seek a future in Europe. This summer’s exhibition of photos at Gemak shows the preparations, the unsuccessful attempts, the final crossing and Mohamed’s arrest immediately on arrival.
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25 April - 21 June 2009
Kibri a Kulturu - Marcel Pinas
Marcel Pinas was born in Suriname in 1971, a descendant of the Ndyuka, a Maroon people. His art not only depicts the efforts the Maroons have to make to keep their culture alive as their way of life is threatened from all sides, it also aims to develop that culture.
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10 January - 22 March 2009
Promised Land
In Promised Land, photographer Pavel Wolberg (b. Leningrad, now St Petersburg, 1966) and video-artist Yael Bartana (b. Afula, Israel, 1970) examine Israeli society with a sharp eye, a great sense of beauty and sometimes almost undisguised astonishment. Wolberg’s photos reveal the frequent absurdity and contradictoriness of everyday life in Israel, caused in part by the constant presence of the army and other security services. Yael Bartana is a video-artist whose surprising, surreal and always highly poetic films address many different issues relating to Israeli and Jewish identity.
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05 September - 04 January 2009
No Man's Land?
Divided, oppressed and displaced. This is the commonly held view of the Palestinian people. More divided than ever since the death of Yasser Arafat, in continuous conflict with Israel since 1948 to secure some kind of existence on the little bit of land left over for them. But the wall that Israel has built around them has not cut them off culturally. Gemak’s exhibition No Man’s Land? highlights the Palestinians’ strong connection and engagement with the rest of the world, albeit imbued with a strong sense of their own origins.
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04 August - 31 August 2008
APXИB 09
We are bombarded with information from all sides, via the television, radio and Internet. One of the most authoritative sources is still the written word in newspapers because, if something is written and printed, it must be true. Russian artist Julia Winterhas taken this premise – taken for granted by so many of us – as the starting point for her exhibition APXИB 09 (Archive 09), which is based on 194 newspaper pages from all over in the world, reworked as a comment on the power of the media.
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29 March - 11 May 2008
From Armenia With Love
Wedged between Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia, Armenia has for decades been the scene of repeated conflict and warfare. Together with deportations during and after the First World War and large-scale emigration since then, these conflicts have produced what is now called the Armenian diaspora. The forthcoming exhibition, From Armenia with Love, will address the artistic and cultural element of this phenomenon. How do three artists of Armenian origin, all now resident outside their native country, regard their roots?
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08 February - 23 March 2008
Future: Afghanistan
Hardly a day goes by without some mention of Kabul, Uruzgan or Tarin Kowt on television or in the newspapers. Even so, Afghanistan is still a place about which most of us know little or nothing – a country at war, about whose social and cultural life we receive little news. But that life certainly exists, as Gemak reveals in its forthcoming second exhibition. Future: Afghanistan is an exhibition of work by young Afghan artists influenced both by their own traditional culture and by western pulp and the commercial products of Bollywood and Hollywood.
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20 October - 31 January 2008
Green Zone / Red Zone
Gemak is The Hague’s newest cultural institution. A joint initiative by the city’s Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and Vrije Academie workplace for the visual arts, it exists to present a challenging blend of contemporary art and politics. Focusing on current developments in these two fields, Gemak will be used both as a platform for work by contemporary Western and non-Western artists and as a venue for lectures, discussions and public debates. The first exhibition, Green Zone / Red Zone, is about the division or involuntary fragmentation of cities like Baghdad under the pretext of improving security.