Pelican Bomb Receives Artis Grant to Support New Exhibition
Artis awards $200,000 in grants to support art and artists from Israel, including Pelican Bomb’s “False Flags” exhibition curated by Noah Simblist.
Documentation of Public Movement’s Also Thus! at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Photo by Kfir Bolotin. Courtesy the artists.
Pelican Bomb has received one of 12 exhibition grants from Artis to support “False Flags,” an exhibition curated by Noah Simblist. Simblist was Pelican Bomb’s first critic-in-residence, completing his stay in New Orleans in December 2014. “False Flags,” which opens spring 2016, continues Simblist’s research and study of nationalism, politics, and representation. The exhibition will include work by Exterritory Project, Public Movement, Ariel Reichman, and Rona Yefman, among others.
Simblist explains, “The term ‘false flag’ is derived from a practice of naval warfare by which nations would fly colors other than their own to deceive the enemy. In modern times, the term has been used to describe a covert military operation by a state actor, designed to appear as if someone else carried it out. But a false flag assumes that a true flag is in fact real. A flag is a symbolic object, a set of abstract signs, that can refer to nations, corporations, or a more general demarcation of space or movement. Flags describe ideological spaces that are often layered and contradictory—signaling more that they might seem at first glance. The exhibition will address these symbolic concepts, and includes works that play with the idea of nations as para-fictional entities.”
Artis is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting visual art and artists from Israel. Since 2004, Artis has given over $1.25 million to support over 200 exhibitions and projects in more than 20 countries. Artforum, Artnet News, and ARTINFO highlight this year’s grant recipients.
Read the full announcement on Art Agenda.