Current ICA exhibitors Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme are among the recipients of this year’s Sharjah Biennial Prize for the final chapter of their Incidental Insurgents trilogy, titled When the fall of the dictionary leaves all words lying in the streets. The previous segments of this project are on view at ICA until March 22, 2015.

ICA served as an incubator for the award-winning culmination of The Incidental Insurgents, as the artists utilized the University of Pennsylvania’s vast resources to further develop their archive-based, research-driven practice—in part through an intensive Penn working group on the politics of publishing organized by curators Alex Klein and Kate Kraczon.

ArtAsiaPacific reports:

Award recipients are chosen at the sole discretion of a SAF-appointed jury. The 2015 jurors were: Koyo Kouoh, founding artistic director of Dakar-based art center RAW Material Company; Suha Shoman, founder and chair of Darat al-Funun/The Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amam, Jordan, a pioneering initiative supporting Arab artists; and artist Park Chang-Kyong, artistic director of the international art biennial, Mediacity Seoul 2014.

The SAF-commissioned work by Abbas and Abou-Rahme featured in SB12, entitled When the fall of the dictionary leaves all words lying in the streets(2015), is the third and final chapter of their “Incidental Insurgents” installation (2012–15). The new, four-channel video work furthers their exploration of the liminal space between the political present and its unseen potential direction.

Read ArtAsiaPacific’s recent feature on Abbas and Abou-Rahme, by Kevin Jones, which mentions ICA.
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: The Incidental InsurgentsA Politics of Publishing: A Conversation with Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme