Since 2010 Jananne Al-Ani has developed a portfolio of film and photographic works titled The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without People, which explores the disappearance of the body in contested and highly charged landscapes by examining the relationship between the technologies of photography and flight in the history of 20th century warfare.
With an enduring interest in abstraction and the aesthetics of scale, much of Al-Ani’s work explores the tension between the ‘microscopic’ view on the ground and a long-distanced cartographic perspective from the air. She is currently developing a series of new films which take the form of aerial journeys by scanning the surface of highly decorated and finely engraved objects in major museum collections, such as the Courtauld metal bag.
Jananne Al-Ani is a London based Iraqi-born artist. A graduate of the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Royal College of Art, she is currently Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London.
Recent solo exhibitions include In-Dis-Appearance, E-WERK, Freiburg (2015); Excavations, Hayward Gallery Project Space, London (2014); Groundwork, Beirut Art Center (2013) and Shadow Sites, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC (2012). Group exhibitions include Film as Place, SFMOMA, San Francisco (2016); A Bird’s Eye View of the World, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2015); A History of Photography: Series and Sequences, V&A, London (2014); the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013) and the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012).
Recipient of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2011), her work can be found in collections including the Tate Gallery and Imperial War Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Darat al Funun, Amman.