o artists address a number of closely related themes, including transgenerational trauma, memory, family, and societal effects of social conditions such as geography, politics, and accessibility. However, the overriding theme remains apartheid, which has left a permanent mark on South Africa's visual culture and self-understanding, and which has become a symbol in the West of the challenges posed by colonialism. Concurrent reworks memories of South Africa’s past through Hlatshwayos og van Staden’s parallel personal histories. By combining Hlatshwayo and van Staden’s respective backgrounds, the exhibition creates an intimate space that contribute to the understanding of South Africa's complex past and present. The entanglement of reading history in photography cannot easily be undone, especially in South Africa where photography’s roots were defined by colonialism, apartheid. Not only did this create a backdrop to photography, but photography became an intrinsic tool of the colonialist and apartheid regime; it was a critical tool in liberation through struggle photography; it continues to offer the possibility to re/define, re/set, and re/think positions, identities and decoloniality. The series Slaghuis II, is Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo’s response to the growing up in a home, that was also a tavern. Marked by the violence that is associated by his experiences, he now transforms the original spaces of home and tavern into his studio, taking up violence as a visual language. Hlatshwayo’s visual language has become one of working and reworking of photographs, as images, as objects, as textures, ripped and rephotographed after they were exposed to the conditions of the tavern. His performances become a retrace of memories - of interacting with the camera. In Van Staden’s series Microlight search starts at an end: the death of his father; he then searches back in time, the connections that his father had with family; the artefacts of history at museums and in homes and family albums, to understand the traces of the origins of how the ideologies of apartheid manifested in the South African Border War that disrupted his father’s life at the age of conscription, 17. Much of his work deals with the traumas that now have become intergenerationally entangled.    Both photographers are thinking of the future of documentary photography and its practice – that the idea of the truth has passed, and that now we can think of documentary photography as experiment, as position. Where Van Staden searches for the original document, in museums, in the stories that families hold, in photo-albums, Hlatshwayo re-photographs the original print that now has become torn, ripped and burnt. Both think of photography as process that can heal memories of violence. By combining the stories of the two artists in one exhibition, curator John Fleetwood presents a nuanced, touching and deeply personal account of a country's shared historical trauma. EventsIn conjunction with the exhibition, Galleri Image will present a seminar about South African art with the artists and curator. In recent decades, South African art has gained a more significant influence internationally, but it remains relatively unknown in Denmark. Further details about the event to follow.In addition, a workshop will be held with students from the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts and DMJX. The exhibition is supported by the Augustinus Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation and City of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen).

c phenomenon; a transformative space that resembles photography, which is traditionally created at the point where light and darkness meet. She explores twilight as a place of cultural origin for creativity, ideas, play and dreams - especially based on research of historical material. In the exhibition, we show one out of a total of six work chapters, where archival material, such as photography, installation pieces, sound, objects and text, come together to form a kind of collage, which points to a deeper understanding of the meaning of twilight. In addition to the piece, Chen Zhe will produce entirely new works for the exhibition.In Dusk, Zhe examines photography as a medium known both for its precise representation of reality and its receptive nature. By "coloring" the narrative, the moment captured in the photograph is no longer unidentified or arbitrary but is embodied by the original intention. Events The exhibition will be accompanied by presentations with the artist and curator as well as panel discussions and tours. In connection with the exhibition we invited Chen Zhe to an artist residency in hopes of realizing a public sculpture.  About Chen Zhe Chen Zhe (b. 1989) holds a degree in Photography and Imaging from the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles. Her works have been shown at biennials and museums around the world, including China, Japan, Germany and Australia. She has received a number of prestigious awards including the Foam Talent (2018), the Xitek New Talent Award (2015) and the Lianzhou Festival Photographer of the Year Award (2012). Chen Zhe's controversial release "Bees & the Bearable" was awarded Best Photobook of the Year at the Kassel Photobook Festival in 2016.Read more about the artist on her website: https://zheis.com/ The exhibition is curated by Yining He (b. 1986), a Chinese curator and author focusing on contemporary photographic art, educated at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.Read more about the curator on her website: http://www.heyining.com/ The exhibition is supported by the Danish Art Foundation the Augustinus Foundation and the S. C. Van Foundation. Photo credit: Chen Zhe: Towards Evenings – Dusk, 2020.

the city of Aarhus.Photobook Week Aarhus 2022: Off Balance In late 2021 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York sent a small, but decisive message: “At MoMA, we believe in the essential role of the photobook” and went on to explain the museum’s intention to play a “vital role” in this development, given that “the photobook has never been so essential as an element of photographic creativity”. As an important player in the field of photobooks, Photobook Week Aarhus (PWA) has always been dedicated to further exposing this important medium and for this reason it is our pleasure to announce this year’s theme PWA: Off Balance, 27–30 October 2022.Off Balance is an attempt to cope with the imbalance of our contemporary condition. Climate change pressuring a possible catastrophe for humanity, the unsustainable gap between rich and poor, plastic pollution and the drastic decrease of biodiversity, and the first pandemic in over a century. These are examples of a world with complicated issues that need to be addressed but are constantly confronted with political divisions and economic interests. With the theme Off Balance, PWA brings the important photobook medium directly into the twisted realities of our current context. Besides the central festival theme, we will also showcase other themes such as Books on Books, which have shaped an often-critiqued canon of publications, and a show on Zines That are Nearly Books, which mark the limits of the medium.Our regional focus will be on Canada with guest curator Louis Perrault, and a special focus on the books of Edward Burtynsky, who has been working on environmental issues for more than three decades. Another expedition on the geographical axis shall take us to Polynesia with guest curator Nina Tonga (Te Papa Tongarewa Museum, New Zealand).This year we also present a special, third regional focus with an exhibition about photobooks from Ukraine. We wish to highlight the country's art and culture in order to provide insight into a country that is currently at the centre of global politics, but which has not been widely explored or discussed in Denmark. We envision Photobook Week Aarhus 2022 as an open and inclusive event that underlines the urgency for action, and the roles that art might play in the process of acceptance, grief, and collaborative action in the most important issues of our time.Photobook Week Aarhus is a collaborative effort by Galleri Image and the Aarhus School of Architecture. Read more at photobookweek.orgPWA 2022: Off BalanceDates: 27-30 October 2022Venues: Kunsthal Galleri Image, Vestergade 29 8000 Aarhus C, Aarhus School of Architecture, Exners Plads 7, 8000 Aarhus, more to come.About Photobook Week Aarhus PWAIn the last 8 years, Photobook Week Aarhus has become an important player in the field, by running an annual event about and around the photobook, publishing projects, conference participations, international collaborations and the creation of a strong global network. We have exhibited publications from all over the world and brought experts together in talks and panel discussions, including online events. We have produced artists’ books, scholarly publications, performances, workshops, and conferences. And we have run an open book market where artists and publishers can exchange their works and their opinions, in an inclusive and unpretentious manner. According to our participants and partners, PWA has become a special meeting-point, which is acclaimed for its atmosphere and spirit, and has been called “the Think Tank of the Photobook”. We have not only tried to be a platform for artists and publishers to show and sell their books, but have also asked collectors, researchers, critics, and creators to share their views with our visitors. Curators from all over the world have been invited to select old books and new books, artists’ books and photobooks, magazines and zines, trade editions and self-published projects, to present them in exhibitions that highlight their regional, thematic, and historical contexts. The themes of the last three editions of PWA have tried to connect the book medium with cross-disciplinary research questions borrowed from the fields of architecture, visual culture, history, philosophy, and social studies. After looking at Flatness (2019), and Seriality (2020), the last festival was dedicated to Movement and Transition, embracing contemporary themes such as migration, globalization and post-colonial thinking, artistic movements such as Fluxus, sub-genres such as company books, and a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and Greenland.Photobook Week Aarhus 2022 is supported by the City of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen) and Dreyers Fond