Walid Raad

Walid Raad
Artist and Professor, Bard College, Anandale-on-Hudson, United States

In part, an artist and a Professor of Photography at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA). The list of exhibitions (good, bad and mediocre ones); awards and grants (merited, not merited, grateful for, rejected and/or returned); education (some of it thought-provoking; some of it, less so); publications (I am fond of some of my books, but more so of the books of Jalal Toufic. You can find his here: jalaltoufic.com), can be found somewhere online.

About the Artist Talk
Two drops per heartbeat: A free-fall in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.

A few years ago, I was invited by TBA21 to propose an exhibition about Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art collection. Until that point, I’d known almost nothing about him, his family, personal life, businesses, and art collection. My main links to him were his daughter, Francesca, and an Oriental carpet he owned that I’d been trying to find for years. But before I had time to reflect on this invitation, I found myself deep in several Thyssen-Bornemisza tunnels. These tunnels began with a daughter and a carpet, and then forked and braided into several historical and fictional spaces. These ranged from images of clouds that appeared mysteriously on the back of several Old Master paintings to gold and silver cups that attract specific types of arthropods; and demon-like creatures tugging at the edges of swamps.