The Current Situation

APT artist Yara El Sherbini`s solo show The Current Situation will be touring to its third venue. In the show the artist uses humour and games to question social and political systems of power and influence. The fun format of a buzz wire game, alternative pub quiz and public wordsearch is certain to get the family talking!

The Current Situation re-appropriates “buzz wire”, a game commonly found at country fêtes and festivals. Here, presented in the form of a world map on a gigantic scale, players are invited to take on the challenge of travelling the globe by carefully navigating the world, complete with internal borders ( contested and established)  with the handheld wand. If you mistakenly make contact with a border, you trigger a red warning light and alarm, feeling a physically ‘buzz’ in your hand.

As the title suggests, The Current Situation is a means of exploring and considering what is happening in the world today. The electrically charged quality of the piece draws our attention to the politically charged nature of global boarders and the power they hold in terms of shaping geographies and identities, and the impact that is felt when national boarders are challenged and when they shift.

Through ‘playing’ with the piece and attempting to navigate the globe, the work invites participants to reconsider our assumed understanding of maps – why are some boarders perfectly straight whilst others follow the natural geography of the land, who had the authority to locate a boarder in the first place, etc? The Current Situation deliberately includes those boarders being contested today. For example the form of the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are forged in the same solid steel as those boarders deemed official, highlighting the relevance and power of these boarders and ensuring those invisible lines became as visible and as equal as the others.