Jane Benson’s Rhythmic Tale of Two Iraqi Brothers

Artist Jane Benson lets her medium do the talking. An artist who primarily creates installations, Benson dissects larger concepts such as the mechanisms of narcissism and representation through a mixture of sculpture and video. The work often possesses a quirky humor—take for example, Happy Faux Flora (2002), an installation where the artist installed two unassuming artificial trees with hand-cut leaves in the lobby of the World Financial Center. While the title of her new solo show, “Play Land,” suggests further funny business, it is perhaps Benson’s sharpest show to date.

For her exhibition at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, Benson homes in on the story of two Iraqi brothers who escaped from Baghdad in the early 2000s. Their story becomes a vehicle for Benson to explore, on an intimately individual level, the social reverberations caused by geo-cultural fractures. The artist uses music to tell the story in a dual-channel video entitled Finding Baghdad (Part A) (2015), which serves as the show’s centerpiece. The video opens on two Iraqi instruments, an oud and a djoze, as they are perfectly split in two. The video then crescendos to a virtual duet played by the two brothers on their half instruments, each on their own screen. Playing from their new respective homes, Cologne, Germany and Sanad, Bahrain, the brothers bridge—if only momentarily—this distance through an emotional ballad, originally streamed over Skype. A poignant marriage of technology and tradition, the piece locates conflict in time and space with pinpoint accuracy.