For their first collaborative exhibition,
Yazan Khalili and
Jonas Staal coined the term ‘state-traps.’ This term addresses more than a decade of artistic, legal and political tactical and strategic engagements through which both artists confront the ideological and repressive apparatuses of the nation-state. Positioning censorship as intrinsic to the freedom of speech, Staal and Khalili expose in their work the limits and falsity of a human right often perceived as the pillar of democracy.
Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing) and the campaign New Unions (2016–ongoing). With BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, he co-founded the New World Academy (2013-16), and with Florian Malzacher he is currently directing the utopian training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing) at the Ruhrtriennale in Germany. Exhibition-projects include "Art of the Stateless State
" (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2015), "After Europe" (State of Concept, Athens, 2016) and
"Museum as Parliament"
(with the Democratic Federation of North Syria, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2018). His upcoming book
To Make a World: Propaganda Art in the 21st Century is forthcoming at MIT Press. Staal completed his PhD research Propaganda Art from the 20th to the 21st Century (2012-2018) at the PhDArts program of Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Yazan Khalili lives and works in and out of Palestine. Khalili studied architecture at Birzeit University (BA 2003), Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College (MA 2010), and Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute (MFA 2015). A founding member of Zan Design Studio in 2005, he became Production Coordinator for Sharjah Biennials 9 & 10, and Technical Director of Palestinian Museum’s “Jerusalem Lives.” He curated “The City; The Image Symposium”, "Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA2012)," and “The Long Journey” (2013), and co-organised the “Walter Benjamin in Palestine” workshop and symposium (2015). In 2015 he won the Extract V Young Artist prize. Khalili lectures at Al-Quds Bard college and leads the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre. Recent solo shows include: "No One Saw the Colors," (Copenhagen, 2018); "On the Other Side of the Law" (Dubai, 2017); On Love and Other Landscapes (Mumbai, 2015). Major group shows include "Being: New Photography" (MoMA, 2018); "Jerusalem Lives" (The Palestinian Museum, 2017) and "Post-Peace" (Kunstverein Stuttgart, 2017).
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