Open talk and round-table discussion with the artist and producer ASAD RAZA on his practice and exhibitions, on the occasion of the first seminar of the ''Exhibition Histories from the 17th century to the present'' series of events. This event is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC and it is FREE - ALL WELCOME! It will take place at the amphitheater of the New Library of Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and prior to Seminar 1 entitled WHAT DO EXHIBITIONS DO? which is conceived by Asad Raza and will take place on the island of Hydra from Sept. 4- 8 2019 (Participants for this seminar were selected by an open call with a deadline on July 1, 2019 and it is now fully booked).

ASAD RAZA (born in Buffalo, USA; lives in New York and Leipzig) combines experiences, human and non-human beings, and objects in his work. Often exploring the idea of dialogue and rejecting disciplinary boundaries, Raza conceives of exhibitions as metabolic entities composed of active scenarios. For Untitled (plot for dialogue), he installed a tennis-like game in a deconsecrated sixteenth-century church in Milan, complete with coaches and iced tea. Root sequence. Mother tongue--exhibited at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the Rockbund Museum in Shanghai, and the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco--is a forest of twenty-six living trees with human caretakers as well as objects belonging to them. Schema for a school is an ongoing series of experimental schools realized inside exhibition settings, at the Ljubljana Graphic Art Biennial in 2015, at the Palais de Tokyo in 2016, and at Prelude to the Shed in New York City in 2018. Raza premiered his film Minor History at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2019. Currently he is preparing the 34th Kaldor Public Art Project in Sydney, Australia, a new work entitled Absorption.
Raza’s works often inhabit or create intimate settings. The Bedroom, first shown at the 2018 Lahore Biennale, creates a temporally indistinct space that invites teenagers to sing and play chess with visitors. For home show, which took place at his apartment in New York, Raza asked artists and friends to intervene in his home life, and gave tours to visitors for the show’s five weeks.
Raza also explored exhibition-making as a form of inhabitation at the Villa Empain in Brussels in 2016-7, where he co-curated the shows Mondialité (with Hans Ulrich Obrist), Décor (with Dorothea von Hantelmann and Tino Sehgal), Répétition, and Seeing Zen. With Obrist, he is curating an ongoing series of exhibitions on the legacy of Édouard Glissant, including Mondialité, Trembling Thinking at the Americas Society in New York and Where the Oceans Meet at MDC Museum of Art and Design, Miami. Raza's collaborative practice includes serving as a dramaturge for group exhibitions such as 2014’s A stroll through a fun palace in the Venice Architecture Biennale, and Solaris Chronicles for LUMA Arles. He is the dramaturge for an ongoing series of exhibitions by the pioneering artist Philippe Parreno.
From 2009-2015, he served as producer for Tino Sehgal’s exhibitions, including major presentations at the Guggenheim Museum (2010) and Tate Modern (2012). In 2014 he realized a long-term goal of bringing Sehgal’s works to the ancient center of Athens, Greece. From 2003-2007, he was active as a political activist and organizer in New York. Of Pakistani background, Raza studied literature and filmmaking at Johns Hopkins and New York University, where he helped organize a labor strike in 2005.
He has an active book-making practice and has written for Jan Mot Newspaper, Kaleidoscope, modern matter, n+1, NERO, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Spike, and Tennis magazine.

The seminar and public event series EXHIBITION HISTORIES FROM THE 17TH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT includes public presentations and discussions focused on the histories of temporary exhibitions, with an emphasis on contemporary theoretical and historical approaches to this topic. The histories of exhibitions have been attracting the interest of a steadily growing number of researchers in recent years. Today, the histories of exhibitions are recognized as significant tools for art history and have played a formative role in recent developments within the discipline. Invited speakers present their research and practice to a broad public, which has the chance to discuss various issues surrounding art exhibitions and their histories.

The Exhibition Histories events are organised under the auspices of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and the Company of Public Benefit of Hydra's Municipality (K.E.Δ.Y.) in collaboration with the not-for-profit organisation Hydra 21. For more information please visit Hydra 21 website at www.hydra21.gr or send us an email on exhibitionstories@gmail.com