Amie dicke biography template
is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat works with the mediums of photography, video and film to explore themes of gender, identity, politics in Muslim countries, and the relationship between the personal and political.
Neshat has held numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums worldwide, including the Museo Correr in Venice, Italy; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Detroit Institute of the Arts; the Serpentine Gallery, London; and most recently a major retrospective of her work was held at The Broad museum, Los Angeles.
Neshat has been the recipient of the Golden Lion Award - the First International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennial (1999), The Davos World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award (2014), and the Praemium Imperiale (2017).
Neshat has directed two feature-length films, Women Without Men (2009), which received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, and Looking For Oum Kulthum (2017). In 2017, Neshat also directed her first opera, AIDA at the Salzburg Music Festival, in Austria.
Shirin Neshat is represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels and Goodman Gallery, London, Johannesburg, and Cape Town.
photo courtesy of Rodolfo Martinez
How I Work: creative director and designer, Veronica Ditting
Many of us have seen glimpses of Veronica Ditting’s studio without even knowing it. The Vitsoe shelves, Kho Liang sofa and concrete floors have made cameos in a Talia Byre fashion shoot and spreads in The Gentlewoman, where Ditting was creative director and stayed for 12.5 years. One of only ten workspaces in London’s Barbican Estate, retrofitted into Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s Brutalist landmark building after its completion in the 1970s, it forms a raw, industrial backdrop complementing her punk, directional style.
The image-maker says she had to view it after spotting the listing on Modernist Estates. Her former landlord in Clerkenwell had doubled her rent. And this trio of rooms, formerly used as rehearsal space for the Guildhall School of Music, had a historical allure and central location she couldn’t pass up. ‘It really feels like you’re in an architectural drawing,’ she says.
Five years ago, Ditting moved into the 85 sqm office with an old rattan lounge chair and some Gispen seating from years living in Amsterdam. She displayed samples of past work for Hermès and John Lobb in her small archive room and brought in simple plywood desks on Egon Eiermann trestles for her co-workers – currently, she has four. USM cabinets hold equipment and office supplies. Spot-lighting comes from several Castiglioni lamps. Ditting has assumed the Dutch penchant for under-designing in order to maintain a functional, utilitarian look. ‘Maybe it’s a little eclectic, but it all works,’ she says. ‘I don’t like contrived design.’
Visiting clients get a detailed PDF with instructions for locating Studio Veronica Ditting through Barbican’s maze of landscaped walkways (‘I like that it’s a bit obscure – it always fascinates people’). But the Argentine-born, German-raised creative spends a great deal
Patti Smith's State of Mind
Smith states that "a café is not a place, but a state of mind," taking to the Mexico City cafe where Che Guevara, Octavio Paz, Roberto Bolano and Fidel Castro had sought out as their own cerebral commune. The project is a multifacted experience, a multimedia "landscape of the mind" through photography and performance, and takes the topic to a wider audience with a poetic billboard and a Cafe La Habana hotline— where 24/7 a call can access the ultimate artistic fantasy, Patti Smith with a personal Café La Habana Session.
Conceptual congregation is an element, but there is evidence in Smith's success in also finding a Formica tabletop, as Lenny Kaye, her longtime guitarist and legendary mind of music can attest to.
office spoke to Kaye in the spirit of the cafe, to discuss what sparks his artistic intuition and what a space can offer the mind in general.
This project deems the cafe as a creative hub, a mecca for artists. Do you feel your meeting Patti in the E. Village reflects this concept?
I do believe that the small and interactive world in which we moved helped bring myself and Patti together. I remember seeing her from afar with Robert Mapplethorpe, being struck by her inner light, and was happy when we found a common ground in the record shop where I worked, and the creative spirit we shared. This proximity, not only to ourselves, but to our potential audience, to which we would formally debut in front of in February 1971 at a poetry reading at St. Mark's church in the East Village, was invaluable in helping us to become who we might be.
What aspects draw you to a place to seek creativity? What is it about a cafe specifically that seems to ignite artistic insight?
I look to a place that simulataneously relaxes and inspires you. A cafe, where one can sit alone, or with like-minded individuals, interacting and conversing as the mood takes one, is an ideal place for the exchange of ideas. Its inform
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