ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Category: ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Exhibition view with a range of objects and images on the walls and display boxes on the ground.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Nicoletta Rousseva ·

The Outsider: Vladan Radovanović at Belgrade’s Museum of Contemporary Art

Vladan Radovanović: Ahead of his Time and Beyond / Vladan Radovanović: Ispred vremena i izvan, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, March 28 – September 10, 2024

Ours is an age of inclusive, pluralistic categories. For the discipline of art history, this is evident in the commonplace use of terms like modernisms and global contemporary art. Capacious and limitless, these terms seek to dispel myths of quality and canonicity, to flatten hierarchies between centers and peripheries, and to resolve asymmetries between the local and the global with little more than the use of a prefix or a plural. The retrospective exhibition, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans ·

Vernacular Modernisms, or Art in Spite of All

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: MODERNISM IN UKRAINE, 1900-1930S, THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA NATIONAL MUSEUM, MADRID, SPAIN; MUSEUM LUDWIG, COLOGNE; THE ROYAL MUSEUMS OF FINE ARTS OF BELGIUM, BRUSSELS; THE BELVEDERE, VIENNA; THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS, LONDON; NOVEMBER 29, 2022-MAY 2, 2023

Visiting a modern art exhibition from Ukraine at this critical juncture is an uncanny experience. The modernist undertaking of the early twentieth century vividly demonstrates parallels between Ukraine’s  historical quest for independence and the country’s current resistance against Russian aggression, which began in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale war in 2022. In the Eye of the Storm… Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Kata Benedek ·

Grafting Solidarities – From the Factories to the Fields

Matter of Art Biennial 2024, Prague, June 14 – September 29, 2024

Six years ago, the Czech section of the Tranzit network launched a new art biennial in Prague titled Matter of Art, currently in its third edition. In contemporary times, nearly every major city hosts biennials to foster local cultural vitality, generate tourism, and enhance the city’s international perception and influence. Each new initiative sparks inquiries into its objectives, content, and audience, at home and globally. This constant self-reflection is especially crucial for biennials in East Central Europe—such as the Biennale Warszawa, Kyiv Biennial, OFF-Biennale Budapest, and Survival … Read more

A tapestry made of wires forms an image reminiscent of a Yugoslav-era print of a worker pumping her fist in the air.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Hella Wiedmer-Newman ·

The Aesthetics of Economic Migration: nGbK’s Gastarbeiter 2.0 Exhibition

Gastarbeiter 2.0: Arbeit means Rad, at nGbK Berlin, April 13 – June 16, 2024

Jelena Fužinato’s mobile structure Builder’s Daughter: Everything is Peachy stands at the entrance to Gastarbeiter 2.0: Arbeit means Rad, an ambitious new exhibition hosted by the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK). Composed from the same gleaming chrome as all of the installations in the exhibition, the piece takes the form of scaffolding holding a landscape painting of the artist’s home in Prijedor (Bosnia and Herzegovina), which was assembled with the help of a group of hired workers. Able to be freely moved around the … Read more

An installation view of a museum with white walls and a glossy gray floor. We are looking into a broad corner of the museum, and in the space we see three-dimensional displays of textile works, some mounted on rectangular frames. The works are brightly colored, with a combination of organic, wavy patterns and (in the work furthest from us) silhouettes that recall rockets or spaceships. There is also a video monitor mounted on the raised floor section closest to us.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Sara Blaylock ·

Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s-1980s

Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s-1980s, at Walker Art Center, November 11, 2023 – March 10, 2024; Phoenix Art Museum, April 17, 2024 – September 15, 2024; and Vancouver Art Gallery, December 14, 2024 – April 21, 2025

Thirty-two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the exhibition Multiple Realities offers a geographically expansive introduction to the creative autonomy that existed behind the Iron Curtain. To the average—which is to say non-specialist—viewer, Multiple Realities provides an intelligible, though not altogether nuanced, view of the Cold War East as a space ruled by ideological inflexibility. Nevertheless, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Klara Kemp-Welch ·

Ricochets: Ukrainian Solidarity and Resilience at the 60th Biennale di Venezia

The war in Ukraine continues to loom large at this edition of the Venice Biennale, as it did at the last, though now the nightmare unfolds in parallel with the heavily mediatized Israel-Hamas war. The city’s walls are plastered with red fly posters advertising directions to the “Nearest Bomb Shelter,” which, as a map shows, is located not far from the Ukrainian pavilion. This information vies for pedestrians’ attention with the “No Genocide Pavilion” Palestinian solidarity posters. An exhibition has been mounted in the Israeli pavilion, but a sign informs visitors that this will remain closed pending the release of … Read more

An installations with archival documents and images.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Karolina Majewska-Güde ·

Some Notes on Transnational Art History in Practice: Revolutionary Romances? Global Art Histories in the GDR at the Albertinum

Revolutionary Romances? Global Art Histories in the GDR at Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, November 4, 2023–June 2, 2024

A decolonial discourse that has materialized in exhibition practices in recent years has set us on a course of unlearning and exploring potentially lesser-known histories. The exhibition Revolutionary Romances? Global Art Histories in the GDR at the Albertinum in Dresden (November 4, 2023–June 2, 2024) shows that we still have much to learn about the histories and forgotten cultural heritage of the Cold War. With two hundred historical art objects, most of them from the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Kata Benedek ·

Re/Opening the DAAD Archives

IF THE BERLIN WIND BLOWS MY FLAG: ART AND INTERNATIONALISM BEFORE THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL AT DAADGALERIE, N.B.K., AND GALERIE IM KÖRNERPARK, SEPTEMBER 9, 2023 – JANUARY 14, 2024   

The exact aim of the large-scale, three-site exhibition, When the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag: Art and Internationalism Before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, is difficult to define. The first sentence of the exhibition’s introductory text promised to offer insight “into the history of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (Berliner Künstlerprogramm—BKP)” and through that “the art scene in West Berlin before the Wall came down.” Based on this promise, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Michael Laundry ·

Personal Witnesses

Illiberal Lives, at Ludwig Forum Aachen, April 22, 2023 – September 10, 2023

The group exhibition Illiberal Lives contributes to a rich and provocative debate on art both as a subject and object of liberal market logic. It is curated by Eva Birkenstock, Anselm Franke, Holger Otten and Kerstin Stakemeier, with works by Pauline Curnier Jardin, Johanna Hedva, Ho Rui An, Blaise Kirschner, Jota Mombaça, Henrike Naumann, Melika Ngombe Kolongo, Bassem Saad, Mikołaj Sobczak, and Jordan Strafer. A unique aspect of this exhibition is that the artists, alongside the curators, have worked with the permanent collection and selected works that … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Artist Profiles / ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans ·

Collaborating with Wind, Water, and Time – Saodat Ismailova

The year 2023 saw two retrospective exhibitions of the work of Saodat Ismailova: Double Horizon at Le Fresnoy-Studio National (February 10 – April 30, 2023), which was the culmination of the artist’s two-year residency at the School of Contemporary Art in Tourcoing, and 18,000 Worlds at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (January 21 – June 4, 2023), which accompanied the Eye Art & Film Prize the artist received for her work interweaving contemporary art and cinema. A year earlier, the artist left her mark both at the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, and at the documenta fifteen exhibition in … Read more

Interior of a tram with black moths placed on the seats, windows and the roof.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Sjoukje van der Meulen ·

European City in a Cultural Upswing: The Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara

The fifth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, Romania, took place this year from May 19 to July 16, 2023. Entitled My Rhino is Not a Myth, about forty per cent of the exhibited works were from the region (with more than half of these from Romania) and the remainder from other regions including Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The exhibition was staged in historic and contemporary buildings in two urban areas – the city center and the new residential and business district ISHO in north-eastern Timișoara – with eleven venues in total, if one … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Sandro Weilenmann ·

How Do Bodies Resist? Image and Self at Museum Ludwig

Image/ Counterimage at Museum Ludwig Cologne, April 22 – August 27, 2023

Drawing on their excellent photographic collection, Cologne’s Museum Ludwig has dedicated an exhibition to the photographic self-portrait. The show, titled Image/ Counterimage, brings together several key works by the artists Carrie Mae Weems, VALIE EXPORT, Ana Mendieta, Sanja Iveković, and Tarrah Krajnak. Spanning three rooms, it offers an engaging tour of different artistic strategies of staging the female body as a site of resistance. While the former four artists represent established positions regarding photography in the feminist context since the 1970s, the latter introduces a more recent inquisition … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Svetlana Boym† ·

Ilya Kabakov: The Soviet Toilet and the Palace of Utopias

This text was first published on the ARTMargins Online website on December 31, 1999. It is being republished in honor of its author Svetlana Boym (1959–2015), and Ilya Kabakov (1933–2023).

At the end of the millennium, it has become fashionable to speak about the “end of history” and the “end of art,” to say nothing about the end of the world. Boris Groys has commented that Soviet civilization was the first modern civilization whose death we have witnessed, and there are more to come.(Boris Groys, “Un homme qui veut duper le temps” in Installations 1983-1995 (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Marta Marsicka ·

Exotic Cosmopolitanism: Magdalena Abakanowicz at Tate Modern

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle Of Thread And Rope, Tate Modern, November 17, 2022—May 21, 2023

Between autumn 2022 and spring 2023, the Blavatnik Building at Tate Modern hosted Every Tangle of Thread and Rope, a solo exhibition of textile works by Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz. Polish critic Piotr Sarzynski called the exhibition “a celebration of Polish art”—and rightfully so, as Tate’s presentation is one of the most prominent exhibitions of Abakanowicz’s work ever curated—and a unique chance for the international audience to become familiar with the sculptor and the narratives surrounding her work.(Piotr Sarzynski, “Las abakanów w … Read more

Room within the Henryk Stażewski exhibition displaying works of sculpture and graphic design.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Kristian Handberg ·

New approaches to art and life in the Polish People’s Republic: Henryk Stażewski at Muzeum Sztuki

Henryk Stażewski (1894-1988) had a long artistic run in two different versions of his home country: first as a pioneer of the avant-garde in the Polish Republic between 1918 and 1939 and then his later, but no less experimental career in the communist Polish People’s Republic founded in the post-war world order after 1945. It is the latter that is the subject of the exhibition Henryk Stażewski: Late Style at the Muzeum Sztuki Lodz – to many known as a legendary institution with a pedigree as an avant-garde museum (including the colorful interior of the Neo-Plastic Room for abstract art) … Read more

A model of a wooden labyrinth, in a darkened room, with just the labyrinth light brightly. The wood used to create the labyrinth has been darkened by burning.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Nicolay Duque-Robayo ·

Unbuild Together: The Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

Curated by Lesley Lokko, the 18th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennial is titled The Laboratory of the Future, and this concept serves as the underlying theme for the central exhibitions in the Giardini and Arsenale, as well as the national pavilions scattered through Venice’s six sestieri. Where the biennale at large provided a spotlight on Africa and the African Diaspora, each of the national pavilions individually returned to the language of “the experiment” to consider possible futures. Often contrasting past and present, as in the case of the Uzbekistan pavilion, this language of experimentation and possibility similarly appeared … Read more

The Canary Archive installation view comprising a large metal cage with TV monitors. The floor is covered with newspaper pages.

ARTMargins Online: Artist Profiles / ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Yulia Tikhomirova ·

The Canary Archives by Chto Delat: Testimony of the Russian ‘Des-Astre’

In March 2022, shortly after Russia had attacked Ukraine, the Chto Delat (What is to be done?) collective produced an artwork entitled Canary Archives in response to the shock of the military escalation.(Chto Delat, “Canary Archives 2022,” http://chtodelat.org/category/b7-art-projects/installations/canary-archives-2022-2/ Accessed January 31, 2023) While work on the project – comprising a four-channel video installation and a newspaper issue – had commenced earlier, the invasion was the catalyst for its statement. The filming and written elements were revised substantially as a consequence of the outbreak of war. Today, more than one year later, the relevance of the work has become … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Karolina Majewska-Güde ·

Recrafting Futures: Feminist Practices of Material Engagement

Arts, Crafts, Affects: Documenting HerStories and Worldbuilding, public seminar at Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, November 25-26, 2022

There are many ways to present an artwork to the public and sometimes, as in the case of research-driven practices, an exhibition is a limited that can often present only the brief, final effect of the many processes and collaborations that go into creating the work. Art—however research-based, relational, dematerialized, participatory, or ephemeral it might be—usually functions within institutional frameworks that require it to be “shown” in order to be shared. In contrast, practices associated with craft relate to a different tradition … Read more

exhibition view

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Mária Janušová ·

Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics

Although fewer than two decades have passed since its opening, the Kumu Art Museum, located in Estonia’s capital city Tallinn, is widely acknowledged for its critical exhibitions that often highlight the nation’s traumatic past. Earlier this year, the museum showed Thinking Pictures: Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics, curated by Anu Allas (professor at the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture of the Estonian Academy of Arts), Liisa Kaljula (curator at the Kumu Art Museum), and Jane A. Sharp (curator at the Zimmerli Art Museum and professor in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, New Jersey, … Read more

Exhibition view, blue

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Giulia Gelmi ·

Investigating Intimacy: Adina Pintilie’s project for the Romanian Pavilion

At the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, Romania is represented by the artist and filmmaker Adina Pintilie with the project You Are Another Me­—A Cathedral of the Body. Curated by Cosmin Costinaș and Viktor Neumann, the project consists of a multi-channel video installation at the Romanian Pavilion, and a virtual-reality extension hosted by the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research.

Through the representation of intimacy and sexuality, the artist confronts and overcomes the concept of the normative, standardized, and performative body, while investigating its relationship with current conversations on gender … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Alexandra Timonina ·

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: Re-enchanting the World, Polish Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale

The Polish Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice this year featured the vibrant textile installation Re-enchanting the World by Polish-Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. The project was curated by Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza and selected by a jury within a competition managed by the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. The Polish contribution to this year’s biennale is unique and the first of its kind, being the first-ever national pavilion represented by a Romani artist. Although there have been several editions of the Roma Pavilion in Venice since 2007 – events and exhibitions dedicated to … Read more

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 by Sjoukje van der Meulen ·

“Situated Solidarity”: A New Curatorial Model for the European Nomadic Biennial?

The fourteenth edition of the nomadic European biennial Manifesta took place in Prishtina, Kosovo, from July 22 to October 30, 2022. The biennial included 25 exhibition venues in an urban parcours throughout the city, ranging from (dilapidated) historic monuments and institutions to public squares, abandoned buildings, and unused or unexpected urban spaces. Four of these venues have been declared “major pillars,” namely the Grand Hotel Prishtina, The Center for Narrative Practices (a former library), an abandoned brick factory on the outskirts of the city, and the so-called Green Corridor, an unused train track that has been transformed into a walking … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Monica Sheets ·

Anti-Social Art: Experimental Practices in Late East Germany

Anti-Social Art: Experimental Practices in Late East Germany at the Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, Minnesota, February 2–May 15, 2022

In Anti-Social Art: Experimental Practices in Late East Germany, curators Sara Blaylock and Sarah James assembled a comprehensive body of art from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that functioned as more than an art historical survey, raising larger questions about the relationship between artists and social and political institutions. The exhibition presented works by over thirty artists and artist groups active in the 1980s and early 90s. Rather than focus on better-known painters such as Willi Sitte, Werner Tübke, or … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Freda Fiala ·

Enduring the Flag: A Review of Maria Kulikovska’s 254 Performance

Maria Kulikovska, 254 Performance, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, April 27 to May 4, 2022

For her durational performance 254 at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska laid on the steps of the museum underneath the Ukrainian flag. From one Wednesday until the next between April 27 to May 4, 2022, and commencing daily at noon, 3pm, and 5pm, she performed an hour of passive action—an active disengagement that reaffirmed the relationship between fight and flight. The performance was a re-enactment of a protest that Kulikovska originally staged in 2014 at Manifesta 10, a contemporary art biennial that took place … Read more

In an all-white room, a diagonal bench has four white drawings on top of it. Beneath the bench is a video monitor with a video showing a person in white falling upwards into a ceiling of sand.

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 by Nora Goleshevska ·

Dream Compass: “There You Are,” or the Bulgarian Pavilion in the Context of the 59th Venice Biennial

“Images are (…) a silent language. They are a station on the way from silence to language. They stand on the frontier where silence and language face each other closer than anywhere else, but the tension between them is resolved by beauty. Images and pictures remind man of life before the coming of language. They move him with a yearning for that life (…) It is the soul that preserves the silent images of things”.(Max Picard, Images and Silence, in The World of Silence (Minnesota: Harvill, 1948), p. 80.)

The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 59th edition … Read more

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 by Hana Halilaj ·

The Grave is Better Than Not Knowing

The Grave is Better Than Not Knowing, Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, Prishtina, November 18, 2021 – January 31, 2022

“The grave is better than not knowing”: this is how Kumrije Jahmurataj expressed her sorrow while anxiously awaiting news of her missing husband, Smajli, who to this day remains unaccounted for after the 1998-99 Kosovo War. Jahmurataj was interviewed as part of research conducted by The Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo (HLC Kosovo), a non-profit organization that was first established during the social upheaval of 1997, before the war began. In the post-war context, HLC Kosovo has played a key role in

… Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek ·

THE EARTH IS FLAT AGAIN

The Earth is Flat Again / Ziemia znów jest płaska, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, September 24, 2021 – February 27, 2022

The impetus to rethink the role of the museum characterizes the overarching exhibition program of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, which historically emerged in the 1920s from the international modern art collection of the Polish avant-garde “a.r.” group and its members, such as artists Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro. The ideas of the “a.r.” group as well as other radical proposals from the beginning of the 20th century to redefine the concept of the museum are currently … Read more

a view of the gallery with plaster sculptures in the foreground and a gray wall behind with paintings

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Jonida Gashi ·

Open Archive: A Review

Open Archive (Arkivi i Hapur), National Gallery of Arts, Tirana, September 18, 2020 – Ongoing.

The advent of the coronavirus pandemic seems to have sparked a surge in archival-minded exhibitions in museums (and other kinds of art spaces) the world over, a trend that was especially noticeable in the aftermath of the first wave of the pandemic during the summer of 2020. Many of these shows have been permeated by a sense of “getting back to basics,” as it were. This is not surprising, given that the coronavirus pandemic has put into question the ability of museums to perform the … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Constanze Fritzsch ·

1 Million Roses for Angela Davis

Albertinum, SKD, Dresden, October 10, 2020 – May 30, 2021

1 Million Roses for Angela Davis opened in early October 2020 at the Albertinum in Dresden, and unfortunately closed almost two weeks later because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the entrance area the visitor finds a video of an interview with Davis (also printed in the catalog) where the activist-philosopher aptly describes the potential of art in the context of historical transformation, emphasizing its epistemological value: “Art can produce knowledge, knowledge of the sort that does not occur with a simple political speech. Art is at the forefront of social … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Myclef Laun ·

“…of bread, wine, cars, security and peace”

“…of bread, wine, cars, security and peace,” Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier, Vienna, March 3– October 4, 2020

Exhibition titles often say a lot about an exhibition. Curators like to borrow a beguiling fragment of wording from an author or adopt a guiding idea that frames how we read the exhibition. Certainly the two texts that provided the theoretical backbone for the exhibition “…of bread, wine, cars, security and peace” recently on view at the Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier are telling. The first text is a book by Lebanese poet, essayist, journalist, and artist Bilal Khbeiz, Globalization and the Manufacture of Transient … Read more