Performance 'Power Failure' by Dafna Maimon at kim? Contemporary Art Centre

2018 04 24 — 2018 04 28 at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Author Echo Gone Wrong
Published in Events in Latvia

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We are excited to invite you to “Power Failure,” a performance by Dafna Maimon as part of her solo show “Family Business: Power Failure” at Kim?.

The performance will occur on April 24 from 5 pm to 7 pm (followed by the artist talk) and on April 28 from 4 pm to 6 pm.

“Family Business: Power Failure” is the fourth in a series of exhibitions and performances inspired by autobiographical and micro historical research into a family-owned business – Finland’s first kebab and falafel restaurant “Orient Express”, which introduced Finns to the delicacies of the Middle East and was opened by the artist’s Israeli father in 1985.

For Riga’s edition the artist is producing an onsite performative space generated by voices and memories about the roles of female family members and power dynamics that include local stories and performers. The reconstructed Orient Express installation at Kim? will be activated by a group of performers, or rather restaurant staff, who will take the function of the business into their own hands. In this rebellious and playful state of operation, the women’s past is reimagined and reenacted in liberating ways suggesting a future of new power dynamics to come.

Family Business: Power Failure is the culmination of a long-term working process; some years ago Maimon found a rather strange high-budget video ad from 1986 that her father had produced, which used his own exoticness in a high-paced narrative to market kebabs in Finland. Starting from this video-relic and her childhood memories, the artist began reworking the commercial and reimagining the restaurant.

“Family Business: Power Failure” is organised within Latvian Centenary Programme. Exhibition is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Frame Finland, Embassy of Finland Riga.