Print_header

Art
Zarina Bhimji: Out of Blue

When

Aug 21, 2009 – Jan 3, 2010

Mondays–Wednesdays (10:30am–5pm)

Thursdays–Fridays (10:30am–9pm)

Saturdays–Sundays (10am–5pm)

Where
The Art Institute of Chicago (111 S Michigan Ave, 312.443.3600)
Price
$18
Details
http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/zarina
Blue_lg_large

Turner Prize nominee Zarina Bhimji returned to Uganda, her childhood home, to shoot this gorgeous, mournful short film. As Out of Blue begins, smoke lies low over verdant hills and a deep droning note resonates in your chest. Her camera tracks slowly, as if holding its breath, over abandoned prisons, tire marks on an empty tarmac, and light sifting through broken windows. Figures appear only fleetingly, like the ghosts of the British Empire or the regime of Idi Amin. Bhimji's drifting images have all the hushed weight of still photographs, carefully composed, but her soundtrack surrounds you with voices and rainfall, radio broadcasts and gunfire, making the shadows of history and loss all the more palpable, if no less equivocal.

Karsten Lund