Scottish Art Events: February 2020

Timely art exhibitions and events take place across the country all of this month by international and locally-based contemporary artists

Preview by Adam Benmakhlouf | 04 Feb 2020
  • Shuvinai Ashoona, Pregnancies in Universe, 2014

In Edinburgh, from the beginning of the month Sulaïman Majali’s new sound and sculptural work will be installed around Collective, drawing out alternative and diasporic narratives of the area. Later in the month, Talbot Rice Gallery hosts a group show of artists called the Pine’s Eye, bringing together artistic responses to the current environmental crisis (29 Feb - 9 May). In Rhubaba, they host the first of a series of workshops titled No School! mainly for undergraduate students interested in alternate forms of education, and open to all.

In Glasgow, there are two new shows opening at CCA on 7 February. Shuvinai Ashoona’s enchanting drawings come from fantasies and imagined scenes of community life amongst settled communities, and the complexity of contemporary life in the wake of Arctic colonialism. Opening on the same evening is a show of new works by artist Isabella Widger, whose drawings, writing and sculpture will revolve around a painted autobiographical work by Charlotte Salomon – whose arresting and sensitive output was cut short by her murder by Nazis in 1943. 

Market Gallery’s first exhibition of the year is by Aman Sandhu, who had a five-star show in the CCA last year. Sandhu’s sculptures, text-based work and videos 'mediate feelings of scepticism about how bodies of colour are consumed in the name of representation to find solidarity and healing within that nervous terrain' (8 Feb - 20 Mar). 

On 13 February, The Common Guild host a primer by New York-based Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme in Kelvin Hall. Their collaborative and diverse multimedia practice probes a contemporary landscape shaped by politics of desire and disaster.

In Dundee's Cooper Gallery, Ambiguous Becoming is a diverse selection of video work from Canada on the subject of the body as a site of constant flux and change. This broad base is the shared ground of several artists who investigate identity and existing in a racist, unequal society. There are two related events on 12 Feb (5.30-7pm) and 20 Feb (6-8pm), before the show closes on 22 February.

In Dundee Contemporary Arts, their group show and events programme Seized by the Left Hand continues. As a shared beginning point, the artists have been selected as relevant to some of the radical politics and philosophy of the sci-fi writer Ursula K Le Guin. Mystical-fantastical poet Nisha Ramayya leads a related event on 20 February, 6-7pm.

http://theskinny.co.uk/art