Siemon Allen

Siemon Allen ( * in Durban ) is a South African installation artist who lives and works in the United States.

Biography

Siemon Allen studied at Technikon Natal in Durban Art Institute and graduated in 1999 with a Master's from. During this time he met his present wife, an American, know and later moved with her to the United States, where he now teaches as a visiting professor at the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

During his time in South Africa Allen was an artists initiative Gründungsmietglied the FLAT Gallery, which consisted in Durban from 1993 to 1995 in the frame.

Allen's work has been shown at the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale as part of the " graft "; he is represented around the world including the collections of the Durban Art Gallery, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Standard Bank Collection as well as in numerous other private and public collections today.

Work and working methods

Siemon Allen is a passionate collector and archivist of South African Ephemera, which he worked up in his large-scale visual information and educational installations. Titled these works as " collection projects," with which the artist in recent years, especially the concept of identity formation in and through distance as well as South Africa's image explored in general.

Allen piles for these installations systematically in mass production of printed material, which he then cataloged and exhibits. The work process is not unlike that of an archivist. As an expatriate South Africans Allen is mainly interested in how a country is seen from the outside and how it, in turn, participates in the formation of the image of himself. The early 2000s, he came across a website of the South African government, which made ​​a widely advertised call for positive " branding " for South Africa abroad and the recruitment of expatriates, not applied working for the government South Africans, which as "ambassadors" should occur in the country. Allen installations expose these essentialist idea of ​​a South African " brand" and make the same time a kind of aid to this branding.

The latest project of the artist is the creation of a comprehensive, based on the Internet archive of audio documents on the history of South Africa. The resultant from this archive exhibition entitled " Records " was shown in the U.S. in 2009 in South Africa and 2010.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions (selection )

  • 2010 Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen, Anderson Gallery, VCU, Richmond, VA, USA
  • 2009 Imaging South Africa: Records, BANK Gallery, Durban, South Africa
  • 2005 Cards II, Fusebox, Washington, DC, USA
  • 2004 News Papers (register ), Drake University - Anderson Gallery, Des Moines, IA, USA
  • 2002 News Papers ( Post / Times), Fusebox, Washington, DC, USA
  • 2001 STAMP COLLECTION - Imaging South Africa, Hémicycle / Corcoran Museum, Washington, DC, USA
  • 1999 House, Gallery 400, Chicago, IL, USA
  • 1994 Songs for Nella, FLAT Gallery, Durban, South Africa

Group exhibitions ( selection)

  • 2011 Desire, Ideal Narratives in Contemporary South African Art, South African Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
  • 2010 Records, The Gordon Schachat Collection - Featured Artist, Johannesburg Art Fair, South Africa
  • 2009 t.error - your fear is an external object, Hungarian Cultural Center, New York, NY, USA
  • 2008 Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
  • T.ERROR 2008, Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary
  • 2008 Hopeless and Otherwise, curated by Valerie Imus, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, USA
  • 2006 A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad, Blaffer Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
  • 2006 Other Than Art, G Fine Art, Washington, DC, USA
  • 2005 Enemy Image, Brooklyn, NY, USA
  • 2004 Freedom Salon, New York, NY, USA
  • 2004 Notes on Renewed Appropriationisms, The Project, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  • 2004 Rear View Mirror, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, UK
  • 2004 A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad, Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
  • 2003 The American Effect, Whitney Museum, New York, NY, USA
  • 2003 Art Positions, Miami / Basel, Miami, FL, USA
  • 2003 ARCO, Madrid, Spain
  • 2002 Context and Conceptualism, Artists Space. New York, NY, USA
  • 2002 Intersections, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
  • 2001 After the Diagram, White Box, New York, NY, USA
  • 2000 Open Circuit, NSA Gallery, Durban, South Africa
  • 1999 import, Goethe Institute ( two- person with Markus Wirthmann ), Washington, DC
  • 1998 Drömmar och Moln, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 1997 Taking Stock, Johannesburg Stock Exchange, South Africa
  • 1997 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, graft, South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
  • 1996 Hitch-Hiker, Generator Art Space, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • 1995 Rembrandt Gallery ( three- person with Thomas Barry and Jeremy Wafer ), Johannesburg, South Africa
  • 1994 Vita Art Now 93, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
  • 1993 Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA ) ( two person with Greg Streak ), Johannesburg, South Africa
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