signs and symbols

April 30 - May 13, 2020

Opening Online: Thursday, April 30, 6:00pm
Closing: Wednesday, May 13, 6:00pm

signs and symbols is pleased to present The Bureaucracy of Angels, a video exhibition by Broomberg & Chanarin as part of the gallery's series of online-only solo presentations of video works.

The Bureaucracy of Angels records the demolition of 100 migrant boats in Sicily in the winter of 2016. These boats arrived laden with refugees from North Africa and while their human cargo were either sent home or absorbed into the asylum system, the boats themselves were never returned to their owners, laying beached on the concrete forecourt of Porto Pozallo in Sicily.

The artists filmed the rescue missions by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) foundation off the coast of Libya as well as the destruction of the boats left to decay once the migrant journeys have been made, in a vast shipping grave yard in Porto Pozallo. The film is narrated by the hydraulic jaws of the digger charged with the job of destroying these boats, tearing them apart into their constituent parts of timber and metal, a process that took forty days to complete. The digger appears in the narrow corridors of the boat yard, on the open sea and in the midst of a rescue operation off the coast of Libya, as a Cantastoria or 'singing storyteller', recounting the Sicilian ballad Terra ca nun senti. The song speaks of the fear and pain associated with immigration to and from Europe's most southerly territory over the last 150 years. The original music 'Terra ca nun senti' is by Alberto Piazza and performed by Rosa Balistreri. It plays alongside a new composition by John Woolrich performed by the London Sinfonietta.

*Please note that Broomberg & Chanarin's video will be viewable online from Thursday, April 30 at 6:00pm until Wednesday, May 13 at 6:00pm. Following the end of the exhibition, the video will only be accessible via private link and password. We trust that given our current circumstances, everyone will act in good faith and good will, understanding that these are primary artworks by our artists that are collected and which would otherwise be password protected.

broomberg & chanarin are artists living and working between London and Berlin. Both Adam Broomberg (born 1970 in Johannesburg, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (born 1971 in London, UK) are professors of photography at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg and teach on the MA Photography & Society programme at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague which they co-designed. Together they have had numerous solo exhibitions most recently at The Centre Georges Pompidou (2018) and the Hasselblad Center (2017). Their participation in international group shows include the Yokohama Trienniale (2017), Documenta, Kassel (2017), The British Art Show 8 (2015-2017), Conflict, Time, Photography at Tate Modern (2015); Shanghai Biennale (2014); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Tate Britain (2014), and the Gwanju Biennale (2012). Their work is held in major public and private collections including Pompidou, Tate, MoMA, Yale, Stedelijk, V&A, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Baltimore Museum of Art. Major awards include the ICP Infinity Award (2014) for Holy Bible, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2013) for War Primer 2. Broomberg and Chanarin are the winners of the Arles Photo Text Award 2018 for their paperback edition of War Primer 2, published by MACK.