Ali Cherri To Fall, Patiently

At the Gairloch Gallery, Ali Cherri presents a series of sculptures, assembled elegantly between different materials, each a hybrid involving ancient artifacts found by the artist in auctions or marketplaces. Adjacent to the sculptures is a series of watercolour paintings and the film 'Of Men and Gods and Mud,' which explores the relationship between humans, labour, and the environment in northern Sudan. Two sculptures by Ali Cherri will be installed outdoors in the sculpture garden of Gairloch Gardens: The bronze sculpture 'The Tree of Life' re-interprets ancient Assyrian reliefs of a sacred tree, while the neon sculpture 'Les (Sur)Vivants' poetically references the perils of surviving catastrophe. As part of our summer program, Ali Cherri also presents two evenings of his films as part of Sunset Kino. 

At the Centennial Gallery, the artist presents the film 'The Watchman.'  Set in Cyprus, the film features a soldier on watch at the edge of no-man’s land between the Greek Cypriot south and the Turkish Cypriot north. As with much of Cherri’s work, the film concerns itself with questions of borders and the challenges they enact upon ideas of sovereignty, identity, and geopolitical realities. 

The rich tapestry of Ali Cherri’s work oscillates between history and memory, realities of violence and residues of trauma, political spectacle and the stuff of dreams, ancient objects and myth and sensuality, death and survival, fragility and resilience, materiality and mortality, and museal knowledge and its ruins. The exhibition is supported by TD Bank Group.