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This work is part of the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art collection in Sarajevo. It was created under the theme Neighbors in Dialogue, an international exhibition which was held in Istanbul, Turkey in March 2007. Mentalopia tackles questions of cultural differences, identity, national pride and borders. Sabella asked the ten participating artists to bring postal stamps from their respective countries, and he subsequently merged the artists' portraits on stamps other than their own. That is the people do not represent their own countries, but rather they reside in 'foreign' space.

Sabella coined the term from the words mental + utopia, another indication of his constant inner search for a new reality or world and Sabella's defiance of constructed notions of identity and confined spaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mentalopia

2007

limited edition of 5 + 2 AP

1 meter in length, width varies.

inject print on canvas

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Shalva Kakhanasvili

 

Lamia Joreige
Steve Sabella
Wafaa Yasin
Farhad Moshiri
Dilek Winchester
Vahram Aghasyan
Atef Akin
     

 

mentalopia installation shot mentalopia

The Mentalopia of artist Steve Sabella



 

Being in Neighbourhood
by Yahya M. Madra

Steve Sabella’s subversion of stamps, an important marker of the sovereignty of a nation-state, suggests us that the proper attitude toward the post-colonial partitioning of the region is to think be- yond it. By transposing the profile images of each participat- ing artist onto a stamp of another’s country, Sabella proposes that we need to think and act beyond the nation, as a part of the neighbourhood.

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