Rehana Zaman - I, I, I, I, and I
Over the course of 2012 Rehana Zaman has been examining the workshop as a site of 'the social' with a group of young people from Body & Soul, a UK charity dedicated to transforming the lives of people affected by HIV. Improvisation games, collaborative techniques and performance strategies drawn from political theatre (Dario Fo, The Theatre Workshop, Augusto Boal and Berthold Brecht) have been integrated into sessions leading towards the production of a video work shown in an exhibition at Studio Voltaire in February 2013.
The work emerges from an ongoing interest in the impact of social structures on the self from familial relations to broader constructs around community and identity as explored in previous works such as Like an Iron Maiden Trapped Between a Rock and a Hard Place (2010) and Pig (2012). Constructing the workshops as a site of research, central to the process of I, I, I, I and I have been the questions, how might a group of people collectively create a work? And to what extent is this at odds with the desires and impulses of the individual?
Rehana Zaman (b. 1982) composes anecdotes, vignettes and short stories drawn from specific socio-political contexts, as videos, performances and texts. Narratives are abstracted and carefully staged to examine how individuals and groups relate. Recent exhibitions include 'The GDR Goes On', The Showroom; 'The London Open', Whitechapel Gallery, London; 'We Love You', Limoncello, London; Outpost Open Film, Outpost plus UK tour (all 2012); 'Other People's Problems', Project Space Leeds (2011) and 'Of Many One', Scaramouche Gallery, New York, (2010). Rehana was a recipient of the Red Mansion Art Prize in 2012. She completed her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in 2011 and is currently participating in the LUX Associate Artist Programme