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Drangularijum, Student Cultural Centre, Belgrade, 1971

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Drangularijum, Student Cultural Centre, Belgrade, 1971

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Author: Jelena Vesić
Keywords: conceptual art, participatory practices, ready-made, thematized role of the audience, youth/student organization

Date: June 22-30, 1971

Participants: Marina Abramović, Josif Alebić, Bojan Bem, Radomir Damjanović Damnjan, Bora Iljovski, Stevan Knežević, Stojan Kovačević-Grande, Slobodan Milivojević-Era, Milija Nešić, Dušan Otašević, Neša Paripović, Zoran Popović, Radomir Reljić, Halil Tikveša, Raša Todosijević, Gergelj Urkom

Art critics and curators (authors of catalogue texts): Bojana Pejić, Biljana Tomić, Ješa Denegri

Catalogue design: Raša Todosijević

Editor of Visual Arts Program of SKC: Dunja Blažević

Location: Student Cultural Center (SKC) gallery, Belgrade

Drangularijum (meaning the collection of small and curious things, Trinketarium, drangulija = a trinket) was one of the constitutive exhibitions from the early history of the Student Cultural Center (SKC) gallery in Belgrade that determined the future work and orientation of the space. The exhibition was significant in terms of its break from the dominant exhibition practice in local art institutions, which normally followed the modernist canon of the great-artist-and-his-work and celebrated the work of art "made by artists' hand." Instead, Drangularijum offered a "ready-made exhibition," a display of already existing objects that were in a different sense-intimate, conceptual, or humorous-linked to the context of artistic life. The artists were invited to exhibit "things" that were dear to them. This idea was the collective conceptual proposition developed during the sessions of the gallery's Redakcija (redaction, or the editorial board of the gallery). Answering the call to artists to "contribute anything that represented themselves and their own creativity or work," quite a diverse selection of objects were brought into the gallery and made into an exhibition.

The collective and experimental character of the project makes it difficult to clearly locate the identity and authorship of an exhibition curator, in the contemporary sense of the term. According to some, the idea came from Raša Todosijević; according to others, Zoran Popović was unofficially the central proponent of the project. Curators and art critics Jerko Denegri, Bojana Pejić, and Biljana Tomić wrote in the accompanying catalogue, explaining the exhibition concept-so it can be said that they articulated how to read the show, while Dunja Blažević operated as the editor of the gallery program, having a crucial influence to the general tendencies of the gallery.

Drangularijum fostered a research-based and experimental exhibition practice in the newly opened space for young cultural practitioners. Pejić wrote in the exhibition catalogue: "The conception of Drangularijum is not new. Similar exhibitions do happen in the world, and there are now some individual attempts here as well. Drangularijum does not want to be new and original. It is just the first seriously organized presentation of this kind in our city. [...] It should have happened much earlier if we haven't been under the pressure of financing all the time. [...] Drangularijum is a challenge. It is an attempt to introduce uneasiness or provocation in the static atmosphere of Belgrade gallery life. [...] Drangularijum does not want to show anything beautiful, characteristic or likeable. Drangularijum does not cuddle your gaze or warm your heart."

The exhibition exposed the new character of artist: not the artist as creator, but as the personality behind the work (with no desire to fetishize personality, artistic life, or life itself). Drangulija (a small and curious thing) was the mediator of this new approach. Denegri wrote: "Instead of emphasizing the privileged position of artistic work with the help of the artificially built scale of aesthetic values, what happens nowadays is direct manifestation of artistic motivation from occasional transient and intense moments of human behavior. [...] These tendencies lead towards the proximity, almost to equalization of artistic and life content-the art will survive only if it manages to conquest the maximum of reality, which is still outside of art. [...] The artists who accepted participation in this exhibition have accepted at the same time the challenge of checking and investigating their own professional and social status."

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Drangularijum - Ready-Made Exhibition or Peoples' Curio Cabinet

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Author: Jelena Vesić Keywords: conceptual art, participatory practices, ready-made, thematized role of the audience, youth/student organization Date: June 22-30, 1971 Participants: Marina Abramović, Josif Alebić, Bojan Bem, Radomir Damjanović Damnjan, Bora Iljovski, Stevan Knežević, Stojan Kovačević-Grande, Slobodan Milivojević-Era, Milija Nešić, Dušan Otašević, Neša Paripović, Zoran Popović, Radomir Reljić, Halil Tikveša,

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City Vibrance: Recent Works in Western Media by Hong Kong Artists, 城市變奏：香港藝術家西方媒介近作展

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City Vibrance: Recent Works in Western Media by Hong Kong Artists, 城市變奏：香港藝術家西方媒介近作展

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VENUE

Hong Kong Museum of Art, 香港藝術館, Hong Kong

DATE
7 Mar – 2 May 1992

CURATOR
TSANG C.C. Gerard, 曾柱昭

ORGANISER

Hong Kong Museum of Art, 香港藝術館 (Hong Kong

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Organised annually since 2009 by Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art

Survival Kit started as a response to the 2008 financial crash. Although the first edition only included European artists, it was a DIY initiative in spirit, with art installed in abandoned Soviet industrial sites, recently bankrupt  commercial spaces as well as "traditional" galleries. The artists were invited to reflect on ideas of 'survival strategies' in the contemporary (Western) world which at the time was experiencing extreme recession. As a response to dire social, political and economical circumstances, Survival Kit has grown into an important annual festival, always taking place in Riga, Latvia.

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China Avant-Garde, 1989, Photography Source: Wang Youshen Archive at Asia Art Archive

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Curator: Gao Minglu

The exhibition was held in February 1989 at the National Art Museum of China, as a landmark reform in the Chinese art sphere after the national catastrophe - Cultural Revolution (1966~1976). The exhibition was temporarily shut down after 2 hours of the opening due to the artist Xiao Lu's improvised performance - she fired two shots aiming at the mirror in front of her artwork, Dialogue, with a loaded pellet gun - "Four months later the Tiananmen incident took place in Beijing. At the time, the student wanted a dialogue with the government, and the title of my work was just that, 'Dialogue'. And my work became known as the first gunshots of Tiananmen", said Xiao Lu.
(https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/290/3759)

The exhibition is commonly regarded as the first contemporary art exhibition in China, which is also the vital historical moment reflecting the political and social environment in 1990s China - the exhibition poster shown as the "No Turn Around" sign is a vigilant warning to the society - “do not turn back the wheel of history." However, after four months of the exhibition, the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred in June 1989. The pro-democracy decayed.

This exhibition, sometimes, has been satirized by some Chinese art industry insiders as "the start and the end of Chinese contemporary art".

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Khaleej ModernPioneers and Collectives in the Arabian Peninsula

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Khaleej ModernPioneers and Collectives in the Arabian Peninsula

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Curator: Dr. Aisha Stoby
This exhibition is a landmark historical survey of twentieth century modern art movements across the Arabian Peninsula, collectively known in Arabic as the “Khaleej.” Based on Stoby’s PhD research, it traces the region’s ‘pre-boom era’ of the twentieth century through 2007 and examines the evolution of visual art movements as the discovery of oil began to transform the region. It delves into the shifting understanding of public and private spaces and their relationship to national identity as expressed through art practices.

https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/news/best-art-exhibits-2022-1234650570/khaleej-modern-pioneers-and-collectives-in-the-arabian-peninsula-at-the-art-gallery-at-nyu-abu-dhabi/

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Documenta 15. Photo Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

This year, after a series of delays, many of the most anticipated exhibitions of the past few years, coincided, resulting in a bounty of art to see. Prime among them were recurring shows, like the Venice Biennale in Italy and Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, which lured hundreds of thousands of visitors with the promise of cutting-edge art.

But, alongside those art festivals, which tended to hog the spotlight, a number of surveys and retrospectives continued to push at the limits of the canon and introduce new figures, all the while complicating the study of artists who are well-known. Many of these shows are still traveling and will continue to reshape art history as they venture to new venues.

Below, a look at the 25 exhibitions that defined 2022.

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This year, after a series of delays, many of the most anticipated exhibitions of the past few years, coincided, resulting in a bounty of art to see. Prime among them were recurring shows, like the Venice Biennale in Italy and Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, which lured hundreds of thousands of visitors with the promise of cutting-edge art.

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Women’s Art 1978 – exhibition, PSP Jatki Gallery, Wrocław

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Women’s Art 1978 – exhibition, PSP Jatki Gallery, Wrocław

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Date: April 1978

Participants: Suzy Lake (Canada), Noemi Maidan (Switzerland), Natalia LL (Poland), and Carolee Schneemann (USA)

Organizer: Natalia LL

Location: PSP Jatki Gallery, Wrocław

This was the second exhibition of what’s referred to as women’s art in Poland and the first international one where the practices of foreign participants were represented by mail-art pieces.[

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Author: Ewa Malgorzata Tatar
Keywords: artist-publication, gender issues, international network, mail art, photography

Date: April 1978

Participants: Suzy Lake (Canada), Noemi Maidan (Switzerland), Natalia LL (Poland), and Carolee Schneemann (USA)

Organizer: Natalia LL

Location: PSP Jatki Gallery, Wrocław

This wasthesecond exhibition of what's referred to as women's art in Poland and the first international one where the practices of foreign participants were represented by mail-art pieces.[1] Natalia LL was the first Polish artist who contributed to international feminist-art exhibitions and publications since 1975, and her art was published among others' work on the cover of the monographic feminist issue of Heute Kunst (issue 9, 1975) edited by Gislind Nabakovsky. LL also had the opportunity of a half-year stay in the United States, mostly in New York City, in 1977 (through a Kościuszko Foundation grant), and afterwards she gave a series of lectures on feminist art in Polish art galleries.[2] In the Wrocław show, LL exhibited her Categorical Statements from the Sphere of Post-Consumer Art (1975), Schneemann's artist's publication Cezanne, She was a Great Painter (1975), a photo by Suzy Lake showing a woman with her body bound by a rope-shown as an installation, with the rope in space separating the art from the audience-and Maidan's collages on maternity covered by traditional nappies hanging on the walls.

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Author: Ewa Malgorzata Tatar Keywords: artist-publication, gender issues, international network, mail art, photography Date: April 1978 Participants: Suzy Lake (Canada), Noemi Maidan (Switzerland), Natalia LL (Poland), and Carolee Schneemann (USA) Organizer: Natalia LL Location: PSP Jatki Gallery, Wrocław This wasthesecond exhibition of what's referred to as women's art in Poland

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Prête-moi Ton Rêve (Lend Me Your Dream) 

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Prête-moi Ton Rêve (Lend Me Your Dream) 

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‘Prête-moi Ton Rêve (Lend Me Your Dream)’ brings together 30 African artists, including Abdoulaye Konaté, Chéri Samba, El Anatsui, Jane Alexander, Ky Siriki, Ouattara Watts, and Zoulikha Bouabdellah, representing a large portion of Africa’s countries. Having begun in Casablanca, the exhibition has made its way to Senegal where it will be on view in Dakar before travelling to Abidjan, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Cape Town, and Marrakech.  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/18/african-art-exhibition-prete-moi-ton-reve-dakar

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ems Robert Koko Bi may be hard to reach by phone, say museum officials. The sculptor is in a forest near Abidjan in his native Ivory Coast, convening a biennale based on his preferred medium - wood. But Koko Bi's presence in Dakar's Museum of Black Civilisations is hard to miss. His imposing Cedar Men - four statues of black men made of burnt cedar wood - sits at the heart of Prête-moi Ton Rêve (Lend Me Your Dream), one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary African artists ever to tour the continent.

What his limbless monoliths mean to Africa's modern art scene - their sombre heads echoing Easter Island and Mount Rushmore - was perhaps best illustrated when guests from various countries spontaneously gathered amid them on the show's opening night. Silently authoritative, they felt like a natural meeting ground for different cultures, the figures symbolising, in Koko Bi's words, "the dignity of people who believe in maintaining their native soil and contributing to its development and wellness".

This is central to curator Yacouba Konaté's vision as he steers Prête-moi Ton Rêvethrough the second leg of a two-year tour of Africa. The travelling exhibition takes in seven cities - Casablanca, Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Cape Town and Marrakech - all of which have exciting new art markets. In a chosen gallery in each city, audiences will see work by 30 of Africa's biggest artists.

While not all African nations are represented - Kenya and Ethiopia are notable absences - the scope is broad, including South African sculptor Jane Alexander, Malian weaver Abdoulaye Konaté, Algeria's Zoulikha Bouabdellah pushing the envelope of emergent Arab feminism, Burkina Faso's Ky Siriki critiquing the economic relationship with Europe, and Chéri Samba injecting the eccentricity of Kinshasa's streets into paintings filled with irreverent social comment.

Africa has produced world-famous names in music, but many of its star artists remain obscure - particularly on the continent itself, where talent leaves to study abroad, sometimes never to return.

"All too often the careers of African artists are built on exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, London and New York ... but go by without anybody in Africa actually noticing them," writes Konaté in his programme notes. "We are haunted by these ghost-like events that create the nagging feeling that Africa's art scene has been completely ignored."

Speaking from his home in Ivory Coast, Konaté says he believes "in the power of art [to heal]. But this force is more symbolic than practical. How can one forget that art, especially music, has sometimes been used as instruments of torture in concentration camps and prisons? Artists collaborated with dictators while producing songs that filled hearts with joy. My idea is that artists work for values above money and politics."

While on the surface the show feels like a celebration unburdened by politics, you don't need to dig too far to hit hard ground. Its venue in the Senegalese capital invites debate about foreign imperialism both new and old: the museum, which opened last December, was built with Chinese money, and its directors have joined the voices calling for the repatriation of African art from former colonial powers.

The show's title, Lend Me Your Dream, matches the seeming tranquillity of its curation. But there are monsters lurking in the reverie. You may feel like resting your head on the velvet cushion cradling Siriki's melted bronzePrecious Heads. But from these warped, cracked craniums, griot knowledge is leaking out. Siriki's anxiety is that oral histories are, generation by generation, ebbing away.

Abdoulaye Konaté's giant woven masterpiece, Touareg Rouge No 1, may look like a lovingly made blanket to warm you from a Saharan winter. But it is a study of the aesthetic, colours and motifs of Tuareg culture - and potentially a cry for peace. After all, it was Tuareg rebel groups who sparked the Mali conflict that was seized upon by Islamists and has destabilised the Sahel region, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Koko Bi's Two Similar Worlds - a wooden canoe cut in half with a chainsaw and burnt with a blow torch - speaks to the dangers of the exodus of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean. "The young jobless Moroccan man who helped me create it told me he wanted to leave for Europe for a better life," he says. "I told him Europe isn't easy and I cut the boat in two and he was so disappointed. I told him to sit in one of the chairs and he felt powerful. I said, 'That is how you will feel staying in Morocco and looking for a job.' We live in two similar worlds and neither one is better or worse than the other."

The impact of European contact with Africa is similarly present in at least two other works. In Siriki's Africa Faces Its Destiny, young Africans approach white Europeans with begging bowls made from empty tins that once contained rich minerals. But the smiling European bankers have come with two objectives - to dole out wads of cash and simultaneously set up Africa's debt repayment plan at extortionate rates of interest. They do not appear to notice that one young man who has made it across the sea now lies dead at their feet.

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy's installation, Le Laboratoire Deberlinisation, explores how African nations ended up in economic and social turmoil thanks to European incursions. Two giant matchboxes feature a logo of the map of Africa, divided and imprisoned by the columns of the Reichstag. On the sandy beach are matchsticks - some burned, some yet to be ignited. It is a metaphor for the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, where Europe's governments, invited by German chancellor Otto van Bismarck, met to carve up African territory and resources among themselves. It won the Senegalese artist, now based in Berlin, the 2008 Dakar Biennale grand prize.

Art is one way of invigorating African societies that are now emerging economies in their own right, and the Foundation pour le Development de la Culture Contemporain Africaine, who set up the exhibition, hopes to develop connoisseurship among collectors with newfound wealth. Egyptian painter Adel El Siwi, who presented an eye-catching triptych, believes the exhibition is the most important ever seen in Africa. "It is an unprecedented event," he says, "in that it is fully organised and curated by Africans and does not focus on the African diaspora as a central theme."

Bouabdellah, meanwhile, sees it as "part of a process of emancipation" from privately foreign-funded projects conceptualised abroad, "demonstrating that south-south cooperation is possible".

But as well as optimism about the current scene, there is caution, too. "The side effect of these trends is that a great deal of pressure is placed particularly on young artists, to produce for the market, in order to sustain their visibility," says Alexander. "Which can erode the distinct creative value that brought attention to their work in the first place."

Nigerian Nnenna Okore's ceramic and jute pieces, Earthbound and Bride Price, examine the repetitive nature of women's craft and domestic work culture. "I am aware," she says, "that I am one of only five women in a group of 30 artists chosen to represent the continent. I feel privileged, but not without recognising that there is still much work to be done in elevating the voice of African female artists."

Interestingly, two of the five women, Bouabdellah and Alexander, both reference masterworks by men. The former has reinvented Cabanel's The Birth of Venus in dripping blood-red nail varnish - an antidote to the male-gaze representation of women in western art. "While the French painter shows us a naked body lying prey to desire, I prefer a less virile version, which gives back her status as a woman who is mistress of her own passions," Bouabdellah explains.

International visibility is of course vital for African art to thrive. London's 1:54 art fair has joined Paris's Pompidou Centre as a regular platform for African artists, and MoMA recently acquired 45 major African artworks donated by Jean Pigozzi to its reopened permanent collection. It is rare, though, to see African art displayed as it is here, without any trace of ethnocentricity or the normally obligatory accompanying texts about the origins of primitivism and early naive work.

Painter Barthélémy Toguo wants more. "We don't see major European or American galleries coming here," he says. "I would like the Guggenheim or Pompidou to settle in an African country!"

Looking at the cosmopolitanism and affluence growing out of the dust and bustle of Dakar, this feels like an achievable dream. But does Africa need a Tate gallery? Why should western museums continue to reap the benefits? All over Dakar, small contemporary galleries such as Cécile Fakhoury, Raw and Trames are thriving. On the opening night of local artist Fally Sene Sow's show at Trames last week, Senegal's hipsters assembled in a stark industrial space, reminiscent of Hoxton or Williamsburg, with a DJ spinning electro tunes to an excitable, well-dressed crowd.

Where once such an event would prompt stares of astonishment, outside on the busy thoroughfare off Place de l'Independence, taxi drivers in their yellow cabs barely batted an eyelid.

Prête-moi Ton Rêve is at the Museum of Black Civilisations, Dakar, Senegal, until 28 January. Then travelling to Abidjan, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Cape Town and Marrakech until July.

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'An unprecedented event': is this the most important art show ever seen in Africa?

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ems Robert Koko Bi may be hard to reach by phone, say museum officials. The sculptor is in a forest near Abidjan in his native Ivory Coast, convening a biennale based on his preferred medium - wood. But Koko Bi's presence in Dakar's Museum of Black Civilisations is hard to miss.

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Curators: Justin McGuirk & Gemma Curtain

This exhibition took three years to put together, it takes the visitor on a journey illustrating what the waste problem looks like at the moment, addressing the post-war reasons for a shift to single use and non-repairable manufacturing. Finally, we are given a showcase of the innovative ways the problem of waste is being addressed in places like buildings, fashion, electronics and household items. It opened just before the COP26 summit. I liked it because it also considered the way the exhibition was put together using recyclable paper, recycled ink and plain plaster boards which could be reused.

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We are living in the age of waste. Is design the answer to leaving our throwaway culture behind?

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ruangrupa is the Artistic Direction of the fifteenth edition of documenta. The Jakarta-based artists' collective has built the foundation of their documenta fifteen on the core values and ideas of lumbung (Indonesian term for a communal rice barn). lumbung as an artistic and economic model is rooted in principles such as collectivity, communal resource sharing, and equal allocation, and is embodied in all parts of the collaboration and the exhibition.

lumbung members & artists

Towards documenta fifteen, ruangrupa invites community-oriented collectives, organizations, and institutions from around the world to practice lumbung with each other and work on new models of sustainability and collective practices of sharing.

This is a historical website. The imprint available here was valid on the date of the website's publication and is only kept in the original for archival purposes. Here you can get the imprint currently valid for this site and further information.

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documenta fifteen will take place from June 18 until September 25, 2022 in Kassel. The Jakarta-based artists' collective ruangrupa is the Artistic Direction.

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Co-curators: Elio Sea and Yves Sanglante

Decriminalised Futures is a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences.

The exhibition highlights the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation.

I put forward that Decriminalised Futures disrupts the canon of exhibition making by reframing the cultural-historical positioning of sex worker as victim/muse. Instead the invitation is to engage critically with the socio-political themes that surround sex work, creating new perspectives of power, autonomy, validity, joy, and visability.

Through a co-curatorial approach with partnerships such as Arika, a political arts organisation concerned with supporting connections between artistic production and social change, Decriminalised Futures also demonstrates a meaningful commitment to the socio-political themes the exhibition is built upon.

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Curator: Kochi Biennale Foundation is a non-profit charitable trust engaged in promoting art & culture and educational activities in India; primary amongst them the hosting of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, an art exhibition and festival that is the largest of its kind in South Asia. The fifth edition of the Biennale will run from 12 December, 2020 until 10 April, 2021.

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Curator: Kelli Cole
Nov-2020/June-2021

National Gallery of Australia. This exhibition represents the artwork of women living in 26 remote  communities in Australia. Their work in underpin by  a strong connection to country, culture and community. This exhibition is part of a project called KNOW MY NAME, which is celebrating the work of all women artist with an aim  to enhance understanding of their contribution to Australian´s Cuture.
Noelia
https://knowmyname.nga.gov.au/

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A celebration, a commitment and a call to action, Know My Name is a gender equity initiative of the National Gallery of Australia. Know My Name celebrates the work of all women artists with an aim to enhance understanding of their contribution to Australia's cultural life.

Read More

Featured Exhibitions & Projects

Guiding Principles for Gender Equity

Read More

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Javascript is disabled. In order to provide a better user experience, website styles have also been disabled. Some features and content may not be visible. A celebration, a commitment and a call to action, Know My Name is a gender equity initiative of the National Gallery of Australia.

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A Countervailing Theory by Toyin Ojih Odutola

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A Countervailing Theory by Toyin Ojih Odutola

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The Curve (Barbican Centre), August 2020 to January 2021

- Associate Curator: Lotte Johnson; - Curatorial Assistant: Charlotte Flint

Toyin Ojih Odutola is a Nigerian-American artist exhibiting for the first time in the UK. In a 90-metre-long gallery known as The Curve, the author presents an alternative vision of society – an ancient African civilisation under a matriarchal dictatorship –, expressed in the form of 40 drawings, hanging at different heights along the remarkably high wall. The drawings are accompanied by a soundscape by Peter Adjaye, titled ‘Ceremonies Within’.

The exhibition space feels like a cinematic storyboard where the viewer is invited to piece together the fragments of the narrative – creating an aperture for individual experience and interpretation.

The title of the exhibition - A Countervailing Theory - references a political and economic concept of “countering an existing power with an equal force”, which sets a speculative attitude towards questioning familiar histories (a society of white western male supremacy, as I see it personally) and pose alternative realities (this dystopian matriarchal dictatorship story told by the artist).
Joana

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Toyin Ojih Odutola, recognising the pen as a 'writing tool first', plays with the idea that drawing can be a form of storytelling. Working exclusively with drawing materials including pastel and charcoal, she approaches her process of drawing as an investigative practice.

Ojih Odutola proposes speculative fictions, inviting the viewer to enter her vision of an uncannily familiar yet fantastical world. Working like an author or poet, she often spends months creating extensive imaginary narratives, which play out through a series of works to suggest a structure of episodes or chapters. Drawing on an eclectic range of references, from ancient history to popular culture to contemporary politics, Ojih Odutola encourages the viewer to piece together the fragments of the stories that she presents.

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Toyin Ojih Odutola, recognising the pen as a 'writing tool first', plays with the idea that drawing can be a form of storytelling. Working exclusively with drawing materials including pastel and charcoal, she approaches her process of drawing as an investigative practice.

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Artemisia, The National Gallery, London, 2020-2021

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Artemisia, The National Gallery, London, 2020-2021

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Curator: Letizia Treves

In October 2020 The National Gallery of London presented the first major exhibition of Artemisia Gentileschi's work in UK. This exhibition celebrates the virtuosity of a woman artist who lived on the 17th century and narrates her struggles and the fights she gave in order to be established as a serious artist in a patriarchal society. In a time that women were mere objects used to bear children, Artemisia succeeded  in becoming a prominent and well-respected artist, adapting her painting style while maintaining her distinctive chiaroscuro technique and mastering it. Following her journey through her paintings and by being introduced to some details of her personal life, we become acquainted with the artist and the human. Most importantly, this exhibition reports the difficult journey of a female artist that created new protagonists and introduced them with using her art, maintaining her own unique perspective.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/artemisia-curator-led-exhibition-film

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Parliament of Bodies, part of documenta 14, Kassel, Germany and Athens, Greece

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Parliament of Bodies, part of documenta 14, Kassel, Germany and Athens, Greece

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Curator: Adam Szymczyk

Throughout an entire year, from September 2016 in Athens moving to Kassel in April 2017 and ending there in September 2017, the Parliament of Bodies and its Societies were active as a dissonant and at the same time synchronous practice of polyphony and multiplicity. More than 300 artists, activists, thinkers, and writers took part in the events. 112,203 viewers followed the documenta 14 Public Programs via live stream.

Nomadic and performative, working as a stateless heterotopia by means of multiplication and displacement, the Parliament of Bodies acted within the spaces of the exhibition as well as within spaces of both cities (theaters, associations, studios, squares …) that are experimenting with new forms of sovereignty beyond the norm.

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Curator: Claire Wilcox
16 June - 18 November 2018
Victoria & Albert Museum

The exhibition presented a collection of the artist's personal belongings such as clothes, jewellery (that she made herself), artificial leg, or medicines. The exhibition is worth mentioning because all the presented things were closed for 50 years in the Blue House as Kahlo wished. Opening the room was a huge discovery and gave new light to her creativity. The issue that is worth raising is the importance of her medicines that were strongly psychedelic and hallucinating what changed our knowledge about the artist and her art. Many historians pointed out that after that we have to research her art once again considering her mental state. The drugs and artist's condition surely had an impact on her creativity and art visions. This example also shows us how little we know about artist's private life and their work as well as factors that are important in understanding their creativeness. It is very interesting to see (and feel a little) artist's personal life and understand them a little better, feel more attached to them.

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Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up - Exhibition · V&A

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This exhibition presents a fresh perspective on Frida Kahlo's compelling life story through her most intimate personal belongings and clothing

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All the World Futures, Venice Biennale, 2015

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All the World Futures, Venice Biennale, 2015

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Curator: Okwui Enwezor

As a curator Enwezor regarded the curatorial role as an opportunity for 'change agenda'. Bringing together contemporary artists from across the world,  repositioning areas traditionally regarded as  geographical peripheries into a cohesive global narrative and conversation. It was set against a historical context of the Biennale's 120 year history.;

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Basquiat's Defacement: The Untold Story- Guggenheim

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Basquiat's Defacement: The Untold Story- Guggenheim

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Curator: Chaédria LaBouvier

I came across this exhibition researching black, female curators. LaBouvier was the first black curator at the Guggenheim. The exhibition itself is interesting as a pre-cursor to events in Summer 2020, but there is also a separate issue over LaBouvier's claimed treatment at the Guggenheim due to her race. This leads to the appointment of a new black curator, and the replacement on the board of members not commited to decisive anti-racist action.

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Basquiat's "Defacement": The Untold Story | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

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This exhibit examined Jean-Michel Basquiat's exploration of Black identity and his protest against police brutality after the death of artist Michael Stewart.

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LOUISE BOURGEOIS. STRUCTURES OF EXISTENCE: THE CELLS, 2016

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LOUISE BOURGEOIS. STRUCTURES OF EXISTENCE: THE CELLS, 2016

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Guggenheim Bilbao.
Curators: Julienne Lorz & Petra Joos

This exhibition was dedicated to Louise Bourgeois and her "Cells". Each Cell was like a snapshot from her life. From childhood traumas and violence, to death approaching and peace, one could feel every single emotions so brutally that it was sometimes necessary to look away.

Each Cells were a curatorial work of their own created by the artist, but the global curatorial work enhanced the power each of them and told the full story of Bourgeois.

I had the pleasure to see this exhibition back in 2016 and I am, to this day, still blown away.

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Over her long career as an artist, Louise Bourgeois developed concepts and formal inventions that later became key positions in contemporary art; these included the use of environmental installation and theatrical formats, and the engagement with psychoanalytic and feminist themes. Both her distinctive sculptural forms and her outstanding drawings and graphic works are second to none. Among the most innovative and sophisticated sculptural works in her extensive oeuvre are the , a series of architectural spaces that deal with a range of emotions. Created over a span of two decades, the Cells present individual microcosms; each is an enclosure that separates the internal from the external world. In these unique spaces, the artist arranged found objects, clothes, furniture, and sculptures to create emotionally charged, theatrical sets.

Including the five precursor works to the Cells that first emerged in 1986 with Articulated Lair, Louise Bourgeois created approximately 60 Cells over the course of her career. This exhibition is the largest overview of this body of work to date.

Cell (The Last Climb), 2008
Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood
384.8 x 400.1 x 299.7 cm
Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Photo: Christopher Burke
© The Easton Foundation / VEGAP, Madrid

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Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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"Space does not exist; it is just a metaphor for the structure of our existence." Louise Bourgeois Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) is one of the most

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Sindhi Ralli is an old traditional hand woven quilt, the historic designs and motifs date back to Indus valley civilization (5000 BC) and its usage starts from child's birth till the end of life. It was first time exhibited in Karachi in 2017 by the Culture department of Government of Sindh, Pakistan, Karachi is the largest city of Pakistan with an estimated population of 35million and was developed from a fishermen's village to a metropolis during the British Raj (Colonial times) the citizens are from all walks of life and are some what disconnected from the history of the land. This event was a good example for the citizens to experience local art and cultural history from decolonial perspective and lens and be able to appreciate.

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Sindhi Ralli (Quilt) documentary, 1st Sindh Ralli Exhibition & Competition

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Curators: Dr. Nada Shabout, guest curator and consultant, Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute at the University of North Texas; Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Mathaf’s Chief Curator and Acting Director; and Deena Chalabi, Mathaf’s Head of Strategy.

This was the inaugural exhibition for Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar in December 2010.

Sajjil, an Arabic word meaning the act of recording, initiates a space in which various narratives can be articulated in an effort to allow Arab modern art its historical place within a wider tradition of art history.

The exhibition contributes to a renegotiation of the positions of Arabs to and in modernity. It acknowledges the multiplicity of experiences that form Arab modern art and emphasizes the several common moments that justify a collective identity. It is organized around several themes that overlap and intersect, where ideas cut across chronology, and discontinuity and rupture are part of the story.

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Interrupted Histories, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia

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Interrupted Histories, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia

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Curator: Zdenka Badovinac

The exhibition Interrupted Histories does more than simply present as separate entities the art projects of the twenty-seven artists and groups invited to participate; it also offers these works as instruments for new processes in historicizing art.

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Interrupted Histories
Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
14 March-28 May 2006
Artists: Huseyin Alptekin, Artpool, Chto delat, Amit Goren, Ivan Grubanov,
Dmitry Gutov, Dejan Habicht & Tanja Lazetic, Edi Hila, IRWIN, Komar & Melamid, Ziga Kariz, Zofia Kulik, David Maljkovic, Anja Medved & Nadja Veluscek, Pages, Lia Perjovschi & CAA, Borut Peterlin, Alenka Pirman, Tadej Pogacar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art, Marjetica Potrc, Luka Princic, Marija Mojca Pungercar, Khalil Rabah, Erzen Shkololli /Alban Hajdinaj, Anri Sala, Gentian Shkurti/, Mladen Stilinovic, Saso Vrabic, Vadim Zakharov Curator: Zdenka Badovinac
Press conference: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, 11 a.m.
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, 8 p.m.

The exhibition Interrupted Histories does more than simply present as separate entities the art projects of the twenty-seven artists and groups invited to participate; it also offers these works as instruments for new processes in historicizing art. It is this newly acquired function, demonstrated by the works on view, that allows us to speak of a new relationship between art and its history. We see this new function of art in the deliberate and systematic way it involves itself in searching for answers to the urgent questions that face spaces outside the canonized history, spaces we could call spaces of interrupted histories. And while the present exhibition focuses primarily on the eastern half of Europe and, to some degree, on the Middle East, one might easily extend its concerns to the whole of the non-Western world a world that, for political and economic reasons, has not been able to integrate fully the processes of modernity, among which processes we can certainly include the modern system of creating histories historicization.

Artists today find themselves in a situation where, on the one hand, they are still to a large degree left to do their own historicizing while, on the other hand, the newly interested West has already started to include them in its museum collections where they find themselves estranged from their own original context.

The exhibition Interrupted Histories asks, on the one hand, what are the implications of the absence of systematized historicization in spaces outside the Western world or on its margins, and, on the other hand, what sort of methods are needed to accelerate the processes of such historicization.

The exhibition Interrupted Histories presents itself as a kind of tool for creating history.

The participating artists act in their works as archivists of their own and other artists projects or of various phenomena in the national history, as curators who research their own historical context and establish a comparable framework for various big and little histories, as historians, anthropologists, ethnologists, who record current and pertinent phenomena in the interaction between tradition and modernity as well as rapid change in the local landscape.

The exhibition displays the works of art in the physical space of the museum, but at the same time it also goes beyond the limitations of space and time. Both the individual works and the exhibition as a whole are characterized by an open structure, which will allow also for the addition of new elements after the exhibition is dismantled and over.

Elements can further be added to the exhibition on-line ( www.mg-lj.si) and to the catalogue, which has the form of an archival file into which new material can be inserted. Interrupted Histories is both the end product and an open process in progress.

The exhibition will also include archives of samizdat publications, which address current issues in the society and express tendencies toward societal changes. These reflections are in many ways very specific; generally, they oppose the established social patterns and avoid any form of censorship and control.

Among those who have kindly loaned their samizdat archives or participated in the project in some other way are: Petra Kolmancic, Dusan Hedl, Marko Brecelj, Alina Serban, Suzana Milevska, Aleksandra Mircic, Branka Stipancic, Vit Havranek, Edi Muka, Vasif Kortun, Viktor Misiano, Artpool Art Research Centre, Peter Szabo,Bozidar Zrinski.
Editor of the archives: Bojana Piskur.

The exhibition has been supported by:
The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana, Mobitel, Pristop, Mediapool, Renderspace, The Embassy of the Republic of Turkey

Moderna galerija
Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
Tomsiceva 14, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tel: ( 386) 1 2416800, Fax: ( 386) 1 2514120
E-mail: info@mg-lj.si

Opening hours: Tuesday Sunday: 10.00 18.00
Monday closed
More info:
Adela Zeleznik
Moderna galerija
Tel: 0038612416808
E-mail: adela.zeleznik@mg-lj.si

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Interrupted Histories Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia 14 March-28 May 2006 Artists: Huseyin Alptekin, Artpool, Chto delat, Amit Goren, Ivan Grubanov, Dmitry Gutov, Dejan Habicht & Tanja Lazetic, Edi Hila, IRWIN, Komar & Melamid, Ziga Kariz, Zofia Kulik, David Maljkovic, Anja Medved & Nadja Veluscek, Pages, Lia Perjovschi & CAA, Borut Peterlin, Alenka Pirman, Tadej Pogacar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.

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https://universes.art/en/nafas/articles/2009/palestine-venice-2009/images/08-hilal-petti

Curator: Salwa Mikdadi

Palestine c/o Venice marks the first Palestinian participation at the Venice Biennale. Rather than adopt one theme, the exhibition takes on a conceptual framework that embraces the Palestinian people questioning the disproportionate use of the media image of nameless faces and voiceless people. Two of the art projects are collaborative interventions with diverse Palestinian communities whose members will travel to Venice to participate in the art performance and/or the Symposium.

In the same spirit, it is appropriate and necessary to insure that the Palestinian communities under siege, unable to obtain travel passes, join in celebrating the first Palestinian exhibition at the Venice Biennale. In this respect, six Palestinian art institutions in Palestine will exhibit duplicates of the art works, thereby allowing Palestinian audiences to participate in the opening of the exhibition simultaneously to its opening in Venice. The Palestinian venues are: A.M. Qattan Foundation, Birzeit University Art Museum, Al-Hoash Palestinian Art court, International Academy of Art Palestine, Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, and Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation.
https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/38414/53rd-venice-biennale/

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Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti. Palestine c/o Venice

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First Palestinian participation at the Venice Biennale. Curator: Salwa Mikdadi, seven artists. Information and photo tour.

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Curator: Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Max Hinderer, Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekman

May-Sept 2010 Museo y Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Madrid and Berlin
https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/potosi-principle-how-shall-we-sing-lords-song-strange-land

This exhibition rethink the origin of modernity, showing to the world that since the XVI century the histoy of Europe has been inseparable from its colonies and that modernity does not exist without centre-periphery relationship that first arose with colonialism. This exhibition interconnect past and present and the complex relations between the trade structure and ways of thinking in Latin America and Europe. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Noelia

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Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 2007 

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Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 2007 

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Curators: Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin

This exhibition was held in celebration of the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. It was the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art (from 1990 to 2007). Works by 88 females artists from around the world were displayed, and the exhibits included creations in all media (painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, and performance). The exhibition showcased work of both emerging and mid-career artists, arranged thematically.

Maura Reilly is the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and is actively involved in work related to curatorial activism. Linda Nochlin was an important and well-known feminist art historian. Her influential 1971 article "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" is still frequently referred to and cited to this day. The exhibition catalogue of essays, Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art, is well worth a look. (Introduction available here)

(Octavia)

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In her Bind series, Ryoko Suzuki wraps her head with tightly wound pigskin that has been soaked in blood. The pigskin refers to the artist's childhood memories, specifically of an English fairytale, Three Little Pigs, written by Joseph Jacobs. Blood symbolizes female sexuality and the artist's poignant transition from adolescence to womanhood. As the skin is tightly wrapped around her head, her features become warped, almost unrecognizable. Within the Emotions section of the exhibition, Bind stands as a symbol for pain, constriction, and the abject female body.

The idea of "pig is cute" was implanted in me by adults through a cartoon, the "Three Little Pigs." However, breeding pigs I saw at a pig farm, when I was a child, were so huge and ferocious that I could never find any cuteness in them. That was the first time I realized that the fairytale world was far from the reality, and I felt betrayed by adults. That is why I employ the "Three Little Pigs" as a symbol of lies and fictions given by adults, which become exposed sooner or later in the process of a child's growth. The "Bind" series expresses my inner self; a grown-up who left the world given by my parents and other adults and acquired my own thinking, and a woman who has to deal with the female sexuality. In the series, I bound myself with pigskin, which has been soaked in blood as a symbol of womanhood, as a symbol of the given world. I was thinking of my life, in which I had transformed from a child who just took what adults provided, to a woman who led her own life, while I wrapped up my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears with the pigskin. The series is a record of this action. -Ryoko Suzuki

In the photographic series Static Drift, Ingrid Mwangi experiments with her own body, likening it to an open book upon which her own national and racial lineage is both written and read. Here the artist transposes the borderlines of Germany and Africa onto her stomach by way of a stencil and exposure to the sun. National titles and geographic borders are displaced from their habitual contexts, causing one to contemplate what nationalism, skin color, and ethnic identity mean when physically inscribed on a body-particularly a female body. Within the dichotomy of Mwangi's personal biography (she was born in Nairobi and has lived in Germany for many years), the historical relationship between Germany and Africa, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and the oppressed, is also powerfully evoked.

From the Memoria de la postguerra series, Estadistica was fabricated from human hair collected from residents of Cuba. During a five-month collaborative project, Bruguera worked with artists and citizens from all over the island who contributed their hair and assisted in the rolling or sewing of the work. After being rolled into cloth strips, the hair was then attached to the work's support structure. The textile is suggestive of the Cuban flag in its design and recalls the mourning flags flown outside homes on the island. Its technique of fabrication recalls the role of women during the Cuban war of independence (1868-78), when they sewed what was at the time a flag of liberation.

At the same time, Estadistica also represents Bruguera's exploration of the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States in the 1980s. Of this she says: "What we were left with looked like a landscape of trenches devastated by war, in which many of us who remained were exhausted, beaten, or disillusioned and changed our outlook or picked ourselves up in a more personal, private way." According to Bruguera, each clump of hair in the work symbolizes an individual's state of being and contains a portion of their willpower and internal energy. In this manner, Estadistica stands as a powerful symbol of nationalism woven out of the collective daily existence of ordinary people.

March 23-July 1, 2007

In celebration of the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Museum presents Global Feminisms, the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present. The show consists of work by approximately eighty women artists from around the world and includes work in all media-painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, and performance. Its goal is not only to showcase a large sampling of contemporary feminist art from a global perspective but also to move beyond the specifically Western brand of feminism that has been perceived as the dominant voice of feminist and artistic practice since the early 1970s.This exhibition is arranged thematically and features the work of important emerging and mid-career artists.

The Brooklyn Museum presents exhibitions that give voice to diverse points of view. Global Feminisms contains challenging subject matter that some visitors may find disturbing or offensive. Children 17 and under must be accompanied by an adult. Discretion is advised.

This exhibition is co-curated by Maura Reilly, Ph.D., Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Linda Nochlin, Ph.D., Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

In her Bind series, Ryoko Suzuki wraps her head with tightly wound pigskin that has been soaked in blood. The pigskin refers to the artist's childhood memories, specifically of an English fairytale, Three Little Pigs, written by Joseph Jacobs. Blood symbolizes female sexuality and the artist's poignant transition from adolescence to womanhood. As the skin is tightly wrapped around her head, her features become warped, almost unrecognizable. Within the Emotions section of the exhibition, Bind stands as a symbol for pain, constriction, and the abject female body.

The idea of "pig is cute" was implanted in me by adults through a cartoon, the "Three Little Pigs." However, breeding pigs I saw at a pig farm, when I was a child, were so huge and ferocious that I could never find any cuteness in them. That was the first time I realized that the fairytale world was far from the reality, and I felt betrayed by adults. That is why I employ the "Three Little Pigs" as a symbol of lies and fictions given by adults, which become exposed sooner or later in the process of a child's growth. The "Bind" series expresses my inner self; a grown-up who left the world given by my parents and other adults and acquired my own thinking, and a woman who has to deal with the female sexuality. In the series, I bound myself with pigskin, which has been soaked in blood as a symbol of womanhood, as a symbol of the given world. I was thinking of my life, in which I had transformed from a child who just took what adults provided, to a woman who led her own life, while I wrapped up my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears with the pigskin. The series is a record of this action. -Ryoko Suzuki

In the photographic series Static Drift, Ingrid Mwangi experiments with her own body, likening it to an open book upon which her own national and racial lineage is both written and read. Here the artist transposes the borderlines of Germany and Africa onto her stomach by way of a stencil and exposure to the sun. National titles and geographic borders are displaced from their habitual contexts, causing one to contemplate what nationalism, skin color, and ethnic identity mean when physically inscribed on a body-particularly a female body. Within the dichotomy of Mwangi's personal biography (she was born in Nairobi and has lived in Germany for many years), the historical relationship between Germany and Africa, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and the oppressed, is also powerfully evoked.

From the Memoria de la postguerra series, Estadistica was fabricated from human hair collected from residents of Cuba. During a five-month collaborative project, Bruguera worked with artists and citizens from all over the island who contributed their hair and assisted in the rolling or sewing of the work. After being rolled into cloth strips, the hair was then attached to the work's support structure. The textile is suggestive of the Cuban flag in its design and recalls the mourning flags flown outside homes on the island. Its technique of fabrication recalls the role of women during the Cuban war of independence (1868-78), when they sewed what was at the time a flag of liberation.

At the same time, Estadistica also represents Bruguera's exploration of the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States in the 1980s. Of this she says: "What we were left with looked like a landscape of trenches devastated by war, in which many of us who remained were exhausted, beaten, or disillusioned and changed our outlook or picked ourselves up in a more personal, private way." According to Bruguera, each clump of hair in the work symbolizes an individual's state of being and contains a portion of their willpower and internal energy. In this manner, Estadistica stands as a powerful symbol of nationalism woven out of the collective daily existence of ordinary people.

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The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum is New York City's second largest in physical size and holds an art collection with roughly 1.5 million works.

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Outlook. International Art Exhibition in Athens, Exh. : 24 Oct. 2003 – 25 Jan. 2004, Various Venues 

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Outlook. International Art Exhibition in Athens, Exh. : 24 Oct. 2003 – 25 Jan. 2004, Various Venues 

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Curator: Christos M. Joachimides

The Outlook exhibition was one of the most ambitious efforts of Greek art community to create a remarkable international exhibition in Athens. Opening in the autumn of 2003, when Athens was preparing for the upcoming Olympic games - a period of development and experiment for the Greek community, the exhibition was highly recommended and there have been much impatience about it. Taking place in various venues and including any kind of visual art, the exhibition aimed to break the norms of the established contemporary context and to present strong images of the urban society, the industrial environment and all these connected to the Athenian environment. In addition, the presence of C.Joachimides, one of the greatest Greek art historians and curators, had increase the hopes and the expectations of it.

Unfortunately, the result brought huge disappointment to the audience. Many critics were referring to it as an exhibition with no cause or lost, and the reactions for some artworks were so intense which led the curator to substitute one work with another.

*It seemed to me so weird that for such a huge exhibition for the Greek standards there where no specific link addressed to it, but only plenty of articles written about it.

Konstantinos M.

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The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China

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The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China

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Curator: Simon Groom (Head of Exhibitions at Tate Liverpool)
in collaboration with: Beijing-based writer and curator Karen Smith, and the Shanghai-based artist and curator Xu Zhen.
Tate Liverpool, UK
30 March – 10 June 2007

This is one of the first exhibitions on Chinese art in the UK that presents an in-depth survey of work by an emergent generation of young artists. In particular, the curatorial project was based on the idea of showing some of the most spectacular works, many for the first time outside of China, that did not follow just a political critique or exoticism, preferred themes among western audiences and the art market in general. The exhibition at Tate Liverpool attempted to be the most comprehensive show in the UK to reflect the varied and complex nature of contemporary art in China. The problematic term 'contemporary Chinese art' was also addressed. In general, it is linked to a concept of contemporaneity that western canon applies to the arts in the west and around the world, regardless of that particular country's artistic styles and movements. With this in mind, the curators attempted to move the audience's perception to a more global view of China and pointing to a path to better understand contemporary art in China.
Unfortunately, of the 20 artists invited for this exhibition, just 1 was a woman (Cao Fei), which resulted to an unbalanced presentation of what art in China was in 2007.

More info: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/real-thing-contemporary-art-china

Francesca

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Organized by MOCA Curator Connie Butler, 2007., WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is the first institutional exhibition to examine comprehensively the international foundations and legacy of art made under the influence of feminism. This groundbreaking and long-awaited historical survey focuses on the crucial period of 1965 to 1980, when the majority of feminist activism and art making took place around the world. Featuring works in a broad range of media—including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance—by approximately 120 artists from 21 countries, the exhibition explores intercontinental connections and themes based on media, geography, formal concerns, and collective aesthetic and political impulses.

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Established in 1979, we are the only artist-founded museum in Los Angeles. We are dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art.

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Curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset, produced by electra
https://hernoise.org/overview/her-noise-introduction/

Her Noise is a long-term research project, centered around an exhibition which featured five newly commissioned installations by international artists whose practice shares the use of sound as a medium to investigate social relations, inspire action or uncover hidden soundscapes. New installations by Kim Gordon; Emma Hedditch; Christina Kubisch; Kaffe Matthews and Haley Newman all involve high levels of participation and are set in motion only when used by visitors or performers forming a base of events, live music and performances.

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Curator - Okwui Enwezor

Enwezor introduced the global into large scale exhibitions - from Nigeria he was the first non-European curator of Documenta. This was described as the 'first truly global postcolonial documenta exhibition'. The most noteworthy achievements of documenta 11, as Wolfgang Lenk wrote in his essay, consisted in its questioning of the “unspoken hierarchies of attention in the Western exhibition scene,” its denial of the legitimacy of the “West’s exoticizing view of ‘the foreign,’ and the confrontation of that perception with those artistic activities that conflict with our projection.

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Curator: Mary Jane Jacob
May-Sept 1993. Chicago
"Culture in Action" was an art event programme. It involved 8 community-based projects  which didn´t produce anything related to traditional display, but ephemeral artwoks .  This curatorial event was a experience maker not an object maker. It showed that art is a living organism because the artists were putting the audience in the creation process and the results were relevant to the real needs of the community. Some of these projects were extended far beyond the exhibition was ended.
This exhibition was highly criticised by traditional sources but  it was the proof that contemporary art can be everything everywhere.
Noelia

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Curator: Jean Huber Martin

a contemporary art exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette from 18 May to 14 August 1989. Magiciens de la Terre literally translates to "Magicians of the World." In 1989, in the wake of the infamous "Primitivism" show at MOMA, curator Jean-Hubert Martin set out to create a show that counteracted ethnocentric practices within the contemporary art world as a replacement for the format of the traditional Paris Biennial. This exhibition sought to correct the problem of "one hundred percent of exhibitions ignoring 80 percent of the earth."

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Magiciens de la Terre was a contemporary art exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette from 18 May to 14 August 1989.

Primitivism

Magiciens de la Terre literally translates to "Magicians of the World." In 1989, in the wake of the infamous " Primitivism" show at MOMA, curator Jean-Hubert Martin set out to create a show that counteracted ethnocentric practices within the contemporary art world as a replacement for the format of the traditional Paris Biennial. This exhibition sought to correct the problem of "one hundred percent of exhibitions ignoring 80 percent of the earth." He did this in his show, Magiciens de la Terre, exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette. With "Magiciens de la terre" Martin had successfully organized an international exhibition of contemporary art that featured 50% Western and 50% non-Western artists shoulder to shoulder in an equal manner where all participants were still alive at the time of exhibiting, making it truly contemporary. Magiciens also marked a traditional departure from previous exhibitions of non-Western work by identifying non-Westerners by their proper names alongside their Western counterparts, who were always identified in this manner. The artists were presented as individuals rather than by geographic region or time period as was commonplace. This was an attempt by Martin and his curatorial team to subvert the illusion of Eurocentric superiority in the field of artistic representation and the vision of the world inherited from the colonial age.

Martin's show worked to confront problems presented by several exhibitions that perpetuated a colonialist mentality, the most recent being the aforementioned show, "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Many critics condemned "Primitivism", as it fell into a similar Modernist trap of providing only a pure aesthetization of the work of native cultures. "Primitivism" stated that it was only interested in displaying tribal works that influenced Modern artists and studying how this phenomenon functioned within the Modernist discourse. Many of the tribal works were presented vis-à-vis Modernist works when little or no historical evidence of these works drawing inspiration from specific "primitive" works or, in some cases, even a "primitive" idiom. (Varnedoe 13)

L'Exposition Coloniale

In addition to the "Primitivism" show, Magiciens de la Terre worked with the 1931 show, L'Exposition Coloniale as a counter-reference point. This exhibition was organized in a typical colonial fashion, to show the economic and moral superiority of the French country, as well as the products of the grateful colonized. The souvenir medal from the exhibition speaks volumes. The bas-relief features a Western woman on the right (A personification of France with references to allegorical representations of Liberty, Truth, or Wisdom) outstretching her arm to gently comfort and protect her smiling representations of ethnic stereotypes. The Paris Colonial Exhibition is covered within the Magiciens catalog, where this show's colonialist ideology is explained. This show served as a definition of what Magiciens was not.

Paris Biennial

Although Magiciens served to counteract the ideology expressed in the two shows, Magiciens was also meant to resolve some long-standing problems of the format of the Paris Biennial. In years past, the French curatorial team would select the countries to be exhibited, and representatives from the respective countries would select artists that they deemed the greatest artistic talents of their nation. In the view of certain art critics, this method was seen to have failed for including non-Western artists who those critics regarded as second-rate practitioners (in style and content) of artistic movements that originated in the West. It was felt that these artists were not exemplary of the diversity of human cultures, and their work only strengthened Western hegemony. But other critics saw in such pronouncements as "second rate" and "originated in the West," the very eurocentrism these critics were reputedly denouncing, especially as many of the so-called "Western" styles could trace their origins to visual cultures outside and older than Western civilization. In this light, the lack of self-reflection by these critics, with regard to their own criteria and self-reference, showed the entire enterprise of Western criticism to be wanting of a deeper self-analysis, at the same time as it exposed an urgent need for a more thorough exposure to, and exchange with, cultures and histories still distinct from the West.

With the failings of the previous shows in mind, Martin organized Magiciens by selecting one hundred artists from around the world: fifty from the so-called "centers" of the world (the United States and Western Europe) and fifty from the "margins" (Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Australia). No specific criteria were set up for the selection of the individual works in the show as long as this numerical ratio was maintained. When selecting artists from outside the Western tradition, the curator claimed to choose artists according to their artworks' "visual and sensual experiences." Martin explains:

I want to play the role of someone who uses artistic intuition alone to select objects which come from totally different cultures, ... But obviously, I also want to incorporate into that process the critical thinking which contemporary anthropology provides on the problem of ethnocentrism, the relativity of culture, and intercultural relations. (Buchloh 122-133)

But let us not forget, after all, I have to think of this project as an "exhibition." That is, if an ethnographer suggests a particular example of cult . . . but the objects of this culture would not communicate sufficiently with a Western spectator in a visual-sensuous manner, I would refrain from exhibiting them. (Buchloh 122-133)

In an interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh he acknowledged this method had inherent flaws, but also noted that any methodological framework for the selection of works will make similar mistakes. Martin felt that the inclusion of the fifty non-Western artists would begin to facilitate a change starts de-centering notions of an artistic center(s) within the Western tradition of art practice.

Magiciens de la Terre was reviewed by Jeremy Lewison for The Burlington Magazine in August 1989. Lewison gave examples of how the curation of Western artwork with the "margined' art creates cross-currents impacting viewers perception of the Western artists' attempts:

The ritualistic and religious nature of the Aborigine work endows Long's circle with a meaning which, in another context, it might not have ... Where religion, sex, death and functionalism seem to be the basis for the creation of most forms of 'ethnic' art, art itself is often the only reason for the making of western art ... Baldessari's photographic story-book seems tired and knowing when juxtaposed with the innocence of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, whose own imaginative tales deal with the language of animals, stones and trees and illustrate the evolution of the nuclear missile from the chicken-bone by way of the arrow, and whose view of history (Caesar and Ulysses, for example), previously known to westerners in a European form seems equally plausible as African history.

Magiciens de la Terre, Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989. Catalogue of the exhibition with texts by Homi Bhabha, Mark Francis, Pierre Gaudibert, Aline Luque, André Magnin, Bernard Marcadé, Jean-Hubert Martin, Thomas McEvilley, Jacques Soulillou, Adriana Valdés.

Okwui Enwezor and Olu Oguibe, Introduction in Reading the Contemporary. African Art from Theory to the Marketplace, (eds.) Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor, Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) and MIT Press, London, 1999, p. 9.

Clémentine Deliss, Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa, Flammarion, New York, 1995, p. 14/314 (note 6).

Pierre Gaudibert, Art africain contemporain, Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris, 1991, p. 16; 17.

Susan Vogel, Foreword in Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art, p. 12.

Marie-Laure Bernadac in Africa Remix, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005, p. 11.

"Third Text", Special Issue Magiciens de la Terre: Les Cahiers, n. 6, Spring 1989.

Roberto Pinto, Nuove geografie artistiche, chapter devoted to Magiciens de la Terre, postmediabooks, 2012, pp. 63-82.

Lucy Steeds and other authors, Making Art Global: Volume 2: Magiciens de la Terre 1989 (Exhibition Histories), Walther König, Köln, 2013.

Hannah McGivern, Art Newspaper Vol23 Issue259: The Artists Featured in "Les Magiciens" 25 Years Ago, Art Newspaper, 2014, p. 37.

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Magiciens de la Terre was a contemporary art exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette from 18 May to 14 August 1989. Magiciens de la Terre literally translates to "Magicians of the World."

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Curator:  Gerardo Mosquera (27.10–31.12.1989).

Established in 1984, well before the post-89 wave of new biennales cropped up, the Havana Biennial expanded its focus already with the second edition (1986) to include Africa and Asia and became a kind of meeting point for ‘non-Western’ artists even before the political changes of 1989 ushered in a more globalized contemporary art scene. The main theme of the third Biennial was Tradition and Contemporaneity and included in international conference on Tradition and Contemporaneity in the Arts of the Third World. The exhibition included 300 artists from 41 countries.

https://www.afterall.org/publications/exhibition.histories/making-art-global-part1

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Les Immatériaux (1985), Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

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Les Immatériaux (1985), Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

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Curators:   French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput

A pre-1989 event that foresaw the advent of globalisation, as a melancholic anticipation of the changing role of contemporary art in this era of accelerated exchange, and as a moment in a history of exhibitions in the wake of what was called, until recently, aesthetics.

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How does one construct the history of exhibitions - forgotten, unwritten, disparate, often lacking in documentation? In what ways might it be a new kind of history, displacing the traditional focus on objects and related critical histories, yet irreducible to the term 'museum studies'? In what ways have exhibitions, more than simple displays and configurations of objects, helped change ideas about art, intersecting at particular junctions with technical innovations, discursive shifts and larger kinds of philosophical investigations, thus forming part of these larger histories? What does it mean to ask such questions in the era of fast-moving celebrity curators, biennials and fairs, digital ways and means, which have taken shape over the last twenty years?

In this context, it is instructive to look back to Paris in 1985, to an exhibition entitled Les Immatériaux, then the largest to date at the Centre Georges Pompidou, conceived as a dramaturgy of information for the post-modern condition by its curator, the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Documentation of this exhibition is now hard to come by; and even though I have held onto the catalogues and related materials from the press-kit for the review I wrote at the time, it still seems difficult to bring into focus what I saw then. 1 In what follows, I offer some afterthoughts based on my presentation at the Landmark Exhibitions conference at Tate Modern which form a sketch, a history of exhibitions yet to be written, a little fable in which Les Immatériaux figures as a turning-point. 2 The aim of this text is to encourage others to look back at the still striking or strange objects and concerns of this exhibition, which was at once intense and disappointing for Lyotard at the time.

Fig.1
'Tous les auteurs' site, the exhibition's concluding area, where the visitor could participate in real time in various digital writing experiments
Photograph © CCI/J.- C. Plancher, 1985, scenography by Philippe Délis

No doubt there are many great precursors - artists as well as curators - for the sort of unwritten history of exhibitions I have in mind. In this history, artists and artist-groups matter as much as established institutions; it is often from the former that new ideas arise, and from them that curators draw inspiration. One thinks of Alexander Dorner for example, whom - along with El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters - Benjamin Buchloh credits with initiating a shift from 'objects' to 'spaces' (and hence from 'spectators' to 'participants'), a shift later touted as a new idea of art. Dorner's 'laboratory' intersected with pragmatism and a world of things in the making, relating ideas of 'experimentalism' in art and in thought, much as Aby Warburg's archival project - which is so appealing to contemporary curators - now resonates with questions about time and image. 3

However, Les Immatériaux has the distinction not simply of intersecting with philosophical questions, but actually of being the work of a philosopher, arguably even a work of philosophy, even if it was not recognised as such at the time. We may think of Les Immatériaux as a move from philosophy to exhibition, which formed part of Lyotard's ongoing attempt to recast the discipline Kant called 'aesthetics' in a period after the Second World War that had seen the displacement of Dorner and Warburg's archive into English-speaking cultures. Les Immatériaux thus belongs to another history, one that also needs to be written, of the peculiar relations exhibitions have had (and might yet have) with, and in, the great transformations in the discipline of aesthetics - a philosophical discipline that has overdetermined or overshadowed the preoccupations of art history or art criticism since the nineteenth century. An elaborate commentary on the fate of the 'sublime' in the idea of 'aesthetics' or a constant turning back to Theodor Adorno's 'melancholy science', would accompany Lyotard in his work on Les Immatériaux and form part of the larger drama he wanted to stage in his philosophical work. But how, then, did exhibitions (and this exhibition in particular) figure in Lyotard's attempt to recast Kantian ideas in 1985, in and for the 'postmodern' moment?

Les Immatériaux has acquired a sort of cult status among younger French artists like Pierre Huyghe or Philippe Parreno. Drawing upon these artists' interest, Daniel Birnbaum and Sven-Olof Wallenstein have asked just this question, as to whether Les Immatériaux counts as philosophy or possibly as a way of making philosophy. 4 But it was also a question Lyotard asked at the time of Les Immatériaux, impressed as he was by Daniel Buren's remark that what large-scale exhibitions like documenta really show is the show itself. The remark would stay with the philosopher: later, in the 1990s, Lyotard would refer to pictures of exhibitions as 'presentations of ideas', which, in contrast to mere 'documentations of history', would suppose another idea of archive, related to theatre (or to sound or music), and of the scripts through which they are reproduced. 5

Les Immatériaux was a 'presentation of ideas' in the specific sense of 'presentation' and 'idea' which Lyotard was trying to articulate at the time. It thus linked to another striking aspect of Lyotard's curatorial experiment - the role and nature of accompanying research, or the role of 'ideas' and their 'address' in the style of philosophical teaching then current in Paris. With Les Immatériaux, the philosophical seminar would enter into the context of museum research, creating new relations which Lyotard would later evoke in his account of the experience. In the 'open' seminar, he would present ideas put forward in a suggestive philosophical text called 'Time and Matter', later published in a collection of essays entitled The Inhuman. 6 The essay makes interesting reading today, in light of the current interest in exhibitions: in it, Lyotard sets out the larger philosophical 'idea' he hoped to 'present' through Les Immatériaux. What becomes clear is that Lyotard's title concept of 'immateriality' was different from that of the 'dematerialisation of art' associated with the presentation of ideas in what came to be called 'conceptual art', and, in particular, 'institutional critique'. The question thus arises of how this idea and this exhibition are related to that earlier 'conceptual' moment in the 'dramatisation of information', when the whole idea of the exhibition (or 'presentation') was rethought in a manner often opposed to a certain kind of Kantian aestheticism.

In other words, we might consider Les Immatériaux as part of a possible 'history of exhibitions', involved with the 'dramaturgy of information' and with the role of time, matter, and technology in this history, which would, in turn, intersect with a larger unfinished philosophical history of different ideas of 'exhibition' - of 'presentation', 'showing' or 'appearance' - in the history of aesthetics. This history would encompass, for example, ideas formulated in the 1930s, such as Walter Benjamin's distinction between 'exhibition-value' and 'cult-value', the related distinction between vorstellen (to present) and herstellen (to construct) in Heidegger's lectures on the origin of the work of art, and, later, Hannah Arendt's idea of 'the public'. To pursue this history would be to ask: how does one 'present ideas'? What role does 'information' play in this history, perhaps displacing, as El Lissitzky already saw long before the advent of digitisation, the age-old literary culture of the book? What function do visual art institutions play in this history? How does the rise of so-called 'conceptual art' in the 1960s and 1970s, in particular what Buchloh would later isolate (with a nice paradoxical Adornian touch) as its 'administrative aesthetic', effect this history? And how was this history taken up again or posed anew in Lyotard's philosophical showroom at the Centre Pompidou?

In fact, Les Immatériaux (the plural is crucial) was initiated by the architecture and design department of the Centre, and as such no doubt owes much to the model of the industrial exhibition fair, itself a precursor of today's art fairs, a model already evident in Lissitzky's own sense of exhibition as a new art-form. Lyotard was keen to insist that the aim of Les Immatériaux was not to display objects, but to make visible, even palpable (and so 'present') a kind of 'post-industrial' techno-scientific condition, at once artistic, critical and curatorial. Far from the informational ideals of 'communication', Les Immatériaux presented a condition of unease, a sense of disarray, itself given and facilitated by the great aesthetic figure of the labyrinth.

In his own art of presentation, drawing on Dziga Vertov, Lissitzsky would use montage in industrial shows, thereby disrupting a linear perception of history, in what he would call an exhibition 'kino-show'. As Lyotard's 'Time and Matter' essay makes plain, the problem of disrupting narrative is itself an aesthetic idea, central to the notion of 'presentation' in cinema, and in particular, to Deleuze's great account of it, published the same year as Les Immatériaux. 7 Thus, we can now see that Lyotard's exhibition was not unrelated to more recent curatorial efforts to bring artists' uses of film back 'into the light' of exhibition as well as of critical history - as in, for example, Philippe-Alain Michaud's Images on the Move exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2006. Deleuze, of course, had presented post-war European cinema as a great 'laboratory' for new ideas of time and its direct and indirect 'presentation', seeking in it a picture of research and exchange not simply across the arts, but also with philosophy, ideas which he would later pursue. 8

It is this notion of 'research', and of 'connections' between philosophy and art, that is found in Deleuze's 1985 essay on 'Mediators' (more precisely translated as 'Interceders'), which in turn would lead to the problem of 'information' and 'control' in the history of cinema. 9 It is tempting to imagine Lyotard, in a very different way, and in relation to the question of information technologies, as trying to introduce this idea of philosophy 'interceding' in and with the arts into the exhibition context. Les Immatériaux, with its strange ear-phones supplying the visitor with a theory sound-track and its room of computer consoles (absent from prior technology exhibitions such as Kynaston McShine's great Information show at MoMA in 1970), thus came at a particular juncture in critical theory and research, art and philosophy. In Lyotard's labyrinthine theatre of the new (post-cinematic) 'condition' of information, 'immateriality' was no longer conceived in terms of freeing concepts or ideas from all materials, but, on the contrary, of shifting the idea of 'materiality' away from that of 'formed matter' (including the 'modernist' distinction between form and content) and towards the 'techno-sciences' and the city.

More generally, then, we might imagine Les Immatériaux as an extravagant staging of a peculiar moment in the role of information in the history of aesthetics after so-called 'modernism', yet before the 'contemporary' configuration of biennials that was already taking shape in the 1990s, within or against which the question of a new 'history of exhibition' now itself arises. One way to see this in-between status of Lyotard's exhibition is through his own wry, melancholy writings of the 1990s, which would take up the theme of the postmodern in increasingly anxious terms, often with a light humour encapsulated, for example, in the little postmodern fable of Marie, in a now long-gone moment of Asian 'Pomo', sipping cocktails at a 'cultural centre' in Tokyo: 'Marie tells herself, raising her glass along with the centre's staff, that deep down those managers are good only if they keep making renovations. Museums, cultural institutions are not only repositories, they are also laboratories. They are truly banks.' 10

In such semi-biographical 'fables' and other writings from his last decade, we can read Lyotard's own responses to a new 'contemporary' configuration, for which 1989 (or the end of the Cold War) might serve as a take-off date. More specifically, in the new 'contemporary' condition of art that was then starting to take shape, we can perhaps identify, in hindsight, two larger questions with which the resulting configuration would become entangled. On the one hand, there is the question of globalisation, in which Europe no longer monopolises history, Paris is no longer the Capital, and Revolution no longer constitutes the political horizon, as it seemed in the nineteenth century when 'modernism' was born and Hegel proclaimed the end of art. Indeed, Europe is a now a new idea among others in the arts, where the 'grand stories' of modernism or the avant-garde - exemplified by Alfred Barr's famous views on the presentation, acquisition and collection of 'modern art' - now seem increasingly ill-adapted to 'contemporary' conditions. At the Centre Pompidou, of course, 1989 was the year of the exhibition Magiciens de la terre, with its non-European 'representation'. But beyond the sociological or statistical question of the 'representation' of non-Western artists or art-forms in exhibitions, there is, on the other hand, a question that was central to Lyotard's thinking at the time: the nature of 'spaces' or 'zones' of thinking or ideas, and the role cities play in them - that is, the question of where new ideas come from or the geography or 'territoriality' of thought. Thus 'borderland Europe' comes to play a key role in questions of immigration beyond the 'centre-periphery' or 'network' or even 'clash of civilisation' models of globalisation distinguished by Etienne Balibar, whose own question of a 'trans-national citizenship' takes up the notion of 'deterritorialisation' as a condition of thought, art, the relations with one another, and their particular relations with 'local' conditions. 11 But this question of 'global' art ties into the second question, namely, of the role and nature of the 'contemporary' art that corresponds to or is conditioned by this 'globalisation,' that exposes it, disrupts or questions it. More generally, one could argue that Les Immatériaux marked the beginning of a reflection on the question of how the 'contemporary' itself forms part of interactions across borders irreducible to the grand nineteenth-century division of 'modernity' and 'tradition'.

It is of course impossible to analyse here the fairs, biennials, new audiences and collectors involved in today's 'global contemporary' art, which was taking shape at the turn of the 1990s, the sheer volume, geographical and financial scope of which have so dramatically changed the very conditions of making as well as viewing art. But we can see its impact through another crucial question that emerged in art after the 1980s: that of the fate of the modern-contemporary distinction and particularly the role of 'information' and 'materiality' in this distinction. We might see Les Immatériaux in terms of a shift in the way this distinction is drawn or in the very idea of 'contemporary art'.

It has been customary to take the 1960s and 1970s as marking a turning point when, for the first time, 'contemporary art' found itself in contrast or opposition to 'modernist' art. In those years, in particular but not only in New York, the idea of art seemed to free itself from a series of distinctions in which it had been enclosed - production in the studio versus exhibition in the white cube, art versus everyday life, information versus popular culture. Disentangling itself from such divisions, emancipating itself from such institutional forms, contemporary art gained access to a new 'outside' in which visual arts and art institutions, including 'alternative' ones, played a key role, without exact parallels for the 'modernisms' in other fields. But as artist Andrea Fraser still worries that 'we are the institution' and that there is no longer any 'outside', one can only sense that, all these years after Les Immatériaux, the mainstream/alternative, outside/inside distinctions have lost much of their edge, having themselves become part of official art historical and museographic discourses, a nostalgia even, as if, in the end, they were just another variant of 'modernism' or European 'art since 1900'. The question then arises of the new forms that the contemporary-modern would assume in the 1990s in an increasingly global scope, and the impact they would have on the 'history of exhibitions'. Lyotard's writings, and Les Immatériaux in particular, might be read in terms of the passage from one sense to the other of 'contemporary art', as 'dramatising' a key moment in between the two and the feeling of 'disarray' that accompanied it.

Taking place in Paris a decade after the shift in 'information' and art that accompanied 'conceptual art', and prefiguring many of the digital technologies that now surround us, Les Immatériaux was, of course, pitched in terms of the debate on the 'postmodern'. At the time Lyotard tried to get rid of the idea, replacing it with a project of 're-writing modernity', but to no avail. Even today he is mostly remembered for that idea, which in the meantime has lost any critical edge it once had, giving rise to a literature of lament and despair, of which, indeed, Lyotard's own increasing 'melancholy' tone now seems an anticipation. Back in the 1980s, in what he called the 'Beaubourg effect', Jean Baudrillard had entertained a kind of implosion fantasy about the cultural products endlessly recycled through the pipes of the new Centre Pompidou. But even that would no longer be possible in the 'perfect crime' through which the new 'contemporary art' of the 1990s, with its false conviviality, killed off the very idea of 'transgressive art': the 'Beaubourg effect' would be superceded by the Bilbao effect. 12 Instead of objects endlessly recycled in the exhibition-incinerator of a new 'pomo' Paris, art-objects would travel outside, enriching local cities with dramatic architecture, travelling exhibitions and related intellectual 'panels', and with arts of convivial 'participation' for younger 'new audiences'. When Rosalind Krauss dubbed the Guggenheim the real 'pomo' or 'late capitalist' museum, she thus pointed to a new picture of art practices, in relation to or against which the idea of 'contemporary' art would have to define itself. 13

We can distinguish three models and related research themes in which the question of exhibition intersects with the larger issues in aesthetics, whose Kantian sources of the idea of a sensus communis Lyotard was trying to rethink. First, there is Lyotard's increasing interest in Malraux, to whom the philosopher devoted a biography. Indefatigable, Lyotard hoped to recast Malraux's old question of 'silences' in terms of his own idea of making visible, audible, and thus 'think-able', what cannot be seen, heard or thought, and to recast the 'imaginary' side of the museum accordingly. Lyotard articulated this question in 1993 as a search for an 'ontology of the imaginary museum'. 14 Tinged with a melancholy that drew him back to Adorno, the idea was then often tied up with 'bearing witness to the unpresentable' - for Jacques Rancière, the objectionable feature in Lyotard's work and his notion of the sublime. But one might pitch the idea in another way, in light of Douglas Crimp's well-known essay on photography, which, drawing on Foucault, set Malraux's role against the larger question of the intersections of exhibition with forms of knowledge and art. 15 In Foucault's 'Fantasia of the Library', one already finds the great Flaubertian theme, reprised by Crimp, of the 'stupidity' ( bêtise) in the Museum and in the Library, and its peculiar relations with ideas and their 'presentation'. Through Malraux, Foucault aimed at the time to extend the break with the encyclopedic dream that haunted Hegel's philosophy, to the Museum and Manet's relations with it (even though Foucault later destroyed the book he had projected on the topic). 16 However, we might see the idea of the bêtise of museological or encyclopaedic knowledge differently, captured in Peggy Guggenheim's famous quip: it can be modern, it can be a museum, but not both. Perhaps there is always a museological 'stupidity', namely, the arrangements and stories through which the Museum reconfigures and presents the objects in its 'bank', which new or 'contemporary' art is always breaking away from and exposing, through another kind of vital research or laboratory, as with the complex fate of the 'salon des réfusés'. In Lyotard, this 'outside' element, matching the kinds of dissensual 'events' he associated with 'presenting the unpresentable', was in turn related to a notion of the 'theatricality' of exhibitions: the sense in which they are like 'scripts' to be performed in new ways or altered circumstances - either inside or outside museums and with institutional histories.

We thus find a second theme and related discussion in Lyotard's writings from the 1990s. Exhibitions, beyond the reproduction of given forms ('stupidities') of knowledge, can be involved in the 'presentation of ideas' as part of laboratories of research, to use Dorner's word echoed in Marie's remarks in Lyotard's fable. Beyond the figure of the labyrinth and the use of dioramas in Les Immatériaux, Lyotard associated the question of such 'presentation of ideas' with the idea of 'dramaturgy' or theatricality. One always dramatises new 'ideas' - as Deleuze already saw in Nietzsche and Wagner - and exhibitions can be one way of doing this; the notion of 'imaginary' which Lyotard was trying to rescue from Malraux, was another. It is perhaps this theatrical or imaginary side of Les Immatériaux - Lyotard's interpretation of Buren's 'showing the exhibition' - that would appeal to Huyghe and Parreno: the creation of a kind of 'environment' for the enactment of ideas. In the 'presentation' or 'dramaturgical' side of Les Immatériaux, there is also another theme that runs through Lyotard's later writings, captured in his idea that the 'scenography' of the exhibition should simulate, in the heart of metropolitan Paris, the new sort of sprawl or 'con-urban' space he had encountered in California, where only the car radio allows the traveller to know when she or he is passing from one city to another. For Lyotard, this shift from nineteenth-century 'metropolis' to the new 'megapolis' raised questions of 'bigness' and 'generic urban conditions' - questions later developed by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau. The problem of exhibitions and cities, in part under Koolhaas's influence, would continue to be explored in the 1990s by, among others, Hou Hanru, with Cities on the Move and, more recently, in opposition to the 'urban fictions' of Beijing's spectacular architecture. 17 The problem of the fate of Malraux's 'imaginary museum' in the new global 'mega-polis' was Lyotard's way into this problem at the time of Les Immatériaux: 'As the cultural institution proper to the mega-polis, the museum is a kind of zone. All cultures are suspended there.' 18

The notion of 'zone' opens onto a third area, indeed a third zone in Lyotard's late reflections on exhibitions as key institutions in a new global-urban culture. Cities of course have long been seen as 'catalysts' and 'laboratories' of ideas: in the 1930s this trope can be found, for example, in Georg Simmel's essay on the 'Geist' (or 'mental life'), in the diagrammatic childhood memories of Walter Benjamin - first intended for a photo exhibition - and, later, in the 'psycho-geographies' of Situationist dérive (w andering). The sense of a 'deterritorialised' sociability as a condition of democracy was precisely what Deleuze admired in Simmel, the same sense that can be discerned in Fernand Léger's painting Men in the City (1919, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). But in taking up in turn the theme of philosophy as 'the city thinking' for, or in the conditions of, the 'mega-politan' city, Lyotard drew attention to the idea of 'zones' not simply as a matter of graphic design (like in Apollinaire's calligramme), but also, as in 'faubourg' or 'banlieu,' as a space for the 'theatre' of poetry declaimed in the streets. Just as Benjamin's brilliant piece in One-Way Street brought together Mallarmé, advertising and graphic design, Lyotard's 'zone' allowed him to tackle how 'words' entered art and exhibition spaces, and whether literature or writing was to be found in books or in the streets. Before the ubiquity of compendious online catalogues, Lyotard was worried about how such 'ideas' in the con-urban 'zone' would spread around the world as part of massive processes of urbanisation. Where would new 'exhibitions' of ideas in, or in the outskirts zone of, the 'cultural institution' particular to this new global city formation take place? Spiked with the exasperated humour of his late worries about 'nihilism', Lyotard's thoughts on this question - more central than that of including 'other artists' or 'cultures' in a European tradition - anticipated the emergent zones in which art intersects with new ideas, not simply in Paris and New York, but also Berlin and Beijing, São Paolo or Istanbul. The presentation of ideas, the nature of 'zones' for exhibitions in the 'mega-polis' thus becomes a new question, not simply in relation to Malraux's 'silences', but also after, or in, its 'ruins', when the question of contemporary art is asked anew in and through exhibition.

But how, then, should we construct the history of exhibitions? Perhaps such a history is not one thing, governed by a single logic or narrative but, on the contrary, vital precisely because it intersects with many others. This at least is what is suggested in my little contemporary fable of Les Immatériaux: how this exhibition can now be seen as a point of intersection for different histories going off in numerous directions. We might therefore consider 1985 not simply as a date in the field of exhibitions, but also in theory and research, and hence for that presentation of 'ideas' of, and in, art which for two centuries after Kant came to be known as 'aesthetics'. What new forms might this grand philosophical discipline yet assume in the era of 'global contemporary art'? How yet might it interrupt, disturb or intersect with on-going practices or institutions of showing art, and so itself form part of a new unfinished history of exhibition and the new ideas of art associated with it?

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How to cite

John Rajchman, ' Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History of Exhibitions: Landmark Exhibitions Issue', in Tate Papers, no.12, Autumn 2009, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12/les-immateriaux-or-how-to-construct-the-history-of-exhibitions, accessed 18 January 2021.
Tate Papers (ISSN 1753-9854) is a peer-reviewed research journal that publishes articles on British and modern international art, and on museum practice today.

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les immatériaux or how to construct the history of exhibitions: landmark exhibitions issue

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Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History of Exhibitions: Landmark Exhibitions Issue - Tate Papers | Tate

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How does one construct the history of exhibitions - forgotten, unwritten, disparate, often lacking in documentation? In what ways might it be a new kind of history, displacing the traditional focus on objects and related critical histories, yet irreducible to the term 'museum studies'?

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Maliki Jukurrpa (Dingo Dreaming) by Big David Jupurrla Oldfield

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'Dreams and the Land' exhibition, Museum of Mankind, London 14 July 1988 - 30 May 1989

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'Dreams and the Land' exhibition, Museum of Mankind, London 14 July 1988 - 30 May 1989

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An exhibition of contemporary Australian Aboriginal paintings
Curator  - unknown

This was an extraordinary collection of paintings I saw on a school trip brought by an enlightened art teacher, where each piece had a very complex meaning, explained fully and carefully in the accompanying narrative.
The Museum of Mankind existed between 1970 and 1997 and was a branch of the British Museum located in Mayfair, remembered fondly for innovative exhibitions and lively programmes. Curated by anthropologists and archaeologists, it was also important for an emphasis on objects from Africa, Oceania, the Americas and Asia in their original contexts, for engagement with indigenous communities, and for innovations in museum anthropology set in an era where this was not easily accessible.

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The Streets: Forms of Living Together, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

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The Streets: Forms of Living Together, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

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Curator: Jean Leering

In The Street. A Form of Living Together ‘the user’ has a central role. It was hoped that by raising issues about the environment and the way it has been planned and designed, this would activate public awareness and participation in cultural and social processes. After all, the street was ‘from, for and by everyone’, an expression and manifestation of society itself.

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The Street. A Form of Living Together (originally shown at the Van Abbemuseum from 2 June 1972 to 24 September 1972) is now regarded as a legendary exhibition. Young curators in particular praised the way it was presented, its socially relevant theme and the form or model used - based on everyday experiences - to put the point across.

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The 5th International Exhibition of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia

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The 5th International Exhibition of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia

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The 5th International Exhibition of Graphic Arts | Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts

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This project examines global art exhibitions organized, between 1950 and 1990, in or by (formerly) socialist or Communist countries, including the Soviet Union and other Communist/socialist states in Eastern Europe; China; North Korea; South Korea; Cuba, and Africa, including Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Angola.
Socialist Exhibitions

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This project examines global art exhibitions organized, between 1950 and 1990, in or by (formerly) socialist or Communist countries, including the Soviet Union and other Communist/socialist states in Eastern Europe; China; North Korea; South Korea; Cuba, and Africa, including Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Angola.

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This project examines global art exhibitions organized, between 1950 and 1990, in or by (formerly) socialist or Communist countries, including the Soviet Union and other Communist/socialist states in Eastern Europe; China; North Korea; South Korea; Cuba, and Africa, including Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Angola.

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New Tendencies - 5 international exhibitions held in Zagreb, Yugoslavia

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New Tendencies - 5 international exhibitions held in Zagreb, Yugoslavia

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During the period 1961-1973, five international exhibitions were organized under the title New Tendencies in Zagreb, Croatia/Yugoslavia. They continued the development of ideas raised by Exat 51 during the 1950s, and formed part of the broader European post-informel art movement in the 1960s and 70s.

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During the period 1961-1973, five international exhibitions were organized under the title New Tendencies in Zagreb, Croatia/Yugoslavia. They continued the development of ideas raised by Exat 51 during the 1950s, and formed part of the broader European post-informel art movement in the 1960s and 70s.

Commencing with the 1961 exhibition of concrete and constructive art Nove tendencije in Zagreb, the New Tendencies developed into a dynamic movement dedicated to visual research. Around the mid-1960s, the New Tendencies triggered an international Op-Art-boom, which was endorsed by participation in an exhibition entitled The Responsive Eye, at the New York MoMA, in 1965. However, success brought the New Tendencies no closer to its aims: the assertion of 'art as research' and the establishment of new forms of distribution beyond the art market, which should be accessible to everyman. The organizers of the New Tendencies decided to bring their strategy up-to-date and, in the summer of 1968, initiated in the context of the fourth exhibition, Tendencije 4, the program Computer and Visual Research. In 1968 the movement decided to incorporate into its program the computer as a medium of artistic work so as to thereby assert its avantgarde claim and to contribute to the definition of a technology which, as one quite rightly presumed, would define the future of civilization. Until 1973 the supporting institution of the New Tendencies, the former Gallery of Contemporary Art Zagreb - today the Museum of Contemporary Art - had dedicated itself to artistic research by computer with a series of international exhibitions and symposia. At the peak of the Cold War artists and scientists throughout the world presented their work in Zagreb. The New Tendencies thus established a unique platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences from the area of art, the natural sciences and engineering. With the multi-lingual journal Bit International (1968-73, 9 numbers) Zagreb became a point of initiation for aesthetics and media-theoretical thought.

The organizers of NT initially sought to consciously accompany and form the historical transition in which the computer was perceived as medium of artistic creation. They set computer generated works in relation to Constructive and Kinetic art (1968/69) and to Conceptual art (1973). The arts of the electronic media were not considered as an isolated phenomenon but rather incorporated into the history and discourse of fine-and performing arts. (Source)

Exhibition, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, Gallery for Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 3 August - 14 September 1961.

Participating artists

Marc Adrian (AT), Alberto Biasi (IT), Enrico Castellani (IT), Ennio Chiggio (IT), Andreas Christen (CH), Toni Costa (IT), Piero Dorazio (IT), Karl Gerstner (CH), Gerard von Graevenitz (DE), Rudolf Kämmer (DE), Julije Knifer (YU-CR), Edoardo Landi (IT), Julio Le Parc (AR/FR), Heinz Mack (DE), Piero Manzoni (IT), Manfredo Massironi (IT), Almir Mavignier (BR/DE), François Morellet (FR), Gotthart Müller (DE), Herbert Oehm (DE), Ivan Picelj (YU-CR), Otto Piene (DE), Uli Pohl (DE), Dieter Rot (DE), Joël Stein (FR), Paul Talman (CH), Günther Uecker (DE), Marcel Wyss (CH), Walter Zehringer (DE).

Exhibition, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, Gallery for Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 1 August - 15 September 1963.

Participating artists

Marc Adrian (AT), Getulio Alviani (IT), Vojin Bakić (YU-CR), Martha Boto (AR/FR), Enrico Castellani (IT), Andreas Christen (CH), Toni Costa (CH), Cruz-Diez (VE/FR), Hugo Rodolfo Demarco (AR), Piero Dorazio (IT), Equipo 57 (Juan Cuenca, Ángel Duarte, José Duarte, Agustín Ibarrola, Juan Serrano) (ES), Héctor Garcia-Miranda (AR), Karl Gerstner (CH), Gerard von Graevenitz (DE), Groupe de Recherche d'art Visuel (Julio Le Parc (AR/FR), François Morellet (FR), Garcia Rossi (AR), Francisco Sobrino (ES/FR), Joël Stein (FR), Yvaral (FR)), Gruppo N (Alberto Biasi, Ennio Chiggio, Edoardo Landi, Manfredo Massironi) (IT), Gruppo T (Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo, Grazia Varisco, Gabriele De Vecchi) (IT), Dieter Hacker (DE), Rudolf Kämmer (DE), Julije Knifer (YU-CR), Vlado Kristl (YU-CR), Heinz Mack (DE), Enzo Mari (IT), Almir Mavignier (BR/DE), Gotthart Müller (DE), Herbert Oehm (DE), Henk Peeters (NL), Ivan Picelj (YU-CR), Otto Piene (DE), Uli Pohl (DE), Karl Reinhartz (DE), Vjenceslav Richter (YU-CR), Aleksandar Srnec (YU-CR), Klaus Staudt (DE), Helge Sommerrock (DE), Miroslav Šutej (YU-CR), Paul Talman (CH), Luis Tomasello (AR/FR), Günther Uecker (DE), Gregorio Vardanega (IT/AR/FR), Ludwig Wilding (DE), Walter Zehringer (DE).

Exhibition, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, Muzej za umjetnost i obrt, Gallery for Contemporary Art, Museum for Art and Work, Zagreb, 13 August - 3 October 1965.

Participating artists

Marc Adrian (AT), Getulio Alviani (IT), Anonima Group (Ernst Benkert) (US), Francis Hewitt (US), Edwin Mieczkowski (US), Marina Apollonio (IT), Marianne Aue (NL), Hartmut Böhm (DE), Bonies (Bob Niewenhuis) (NL), Martha Boto (AR/FR), Gruppo Di Ricerca Cibernetica (IT), Inge Claus-Jansen (DE), Waldemar Cordeiro (IT/BR), Ivan Čižmek (YU-CR), Dadamaino (IT), Juraj Dobrović (YU-CR), Dvizheniye (Vladimir Petrovič Galkin, Francisco Arana Infante, Georgij Ivanovič Lopakov, Lev Voldemarovič Nusberg, Viktor Vladimirovič Stepanov) (RU), Effekt (DE), Gruppo N (Alberto Biasi, Manfredo Massironi) (IT), Equipo 57 (Juan Cuenca, Ángel Duarte, José Duarte, Agustin Ibarrola, Juan Serrano) (ES), Eronda (IT), Cam Estenfelder (DE), Karl Gerstner (CH/DE), Jürgen Graaf (DE), Gerard von Graevenitz (DE), Tom Hudson (UK), Reimer Jochims (DE), Rudolf Kaemmer (DE), Ed Kiënder (DE), Hans König-Klingenberg (DE), Edward Krasinski (PL), Bernard Lassus (FR), Lucia Di Luciano (IT), Wolfgang Ludwig (DE), Frank Joseph Malina (US), Kenneth Martin (UK), Gruppo MID (IT), François Morellet (FR), Bruno Munari (IT), Koloman Novak (YU-CR/SR), Fedora Orebić (YU-CR), Henk Peeters (NL), Helga Philip (AT), Ivan Picelj (YU-CR), Otto Piene (DE), Giovanni Pizzo (IT), Lothar Quinte (DE), Vjenceslav Richter (YU-CR), Bridget Riley (UK), Christian Roeckenschuss (DE), Dieter Rot (DE), Paolo Scheggi (IT), Turi Simeti (IT), Ed Sommer (DE), Klaus Staudt (DE), Zdeněk Sýkora (CS-CZ), Sándor Szandaï (HU), Gruppo T (Giovanni Ancheschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo, Gabriele De Vecchi) (IT), Erwin Thorn (AT), Ivanhoe Trivulzio (IT), Gregorio Vardanega (IT/FR), Emilio Vedova (IT), Nanda Vigo (IT), herman de vries (NL), Ante Vulin (YU-CR), Ludwig Wilding (DE).

Tendencije 4 - Tendency 4, 1968

Tendencije 4, Kompjutori i vizuelna istraživanja - Tendency 4, Computer and Visual Research.

Informational exhibition featuring computer graphics and programmed works, Centar za kulturu i informacije [Center for Culture and Information], Zagreb, 2-8 August 1968.

Photographs.

Tendencije 4, Nove tendencije 4 (Retrospektiva NT 1 - NT 3; Recentni primjeri vizuelnih istraživanja) - Tendencies 4, New Tendency 4 (Retrospective of NT 1-NT3, Latest Examples of Visual Research),

Exhibition, Muzej za umjetnost i obrt [Museum of Art and Work], Zagreb, 5 May - 30 June 1969.

Photographs.

Artists represented in Retrospective of NT 1-NT 3

Marc Adrian (AT), Getulio Alviani (IT), Vojin Bakić (YU-CR), Alberto Biasi (IT), Gianni Colombo (IT), Giovanni Antonio Costa (IT), Juraj Dobrović (YU-CR), Michel Fadat (FR), Rudolf Kämmer (DE), Julije Knifer (YU-CR), Vlado Kristl (YU-CR), Julio Le Parc (AR/FR), Heinz Mack (DE), Manfredo Massironi (IT), Almir Mavignier (BR/DE), François Morellet (FR), Helga Philip (AT), Ivan Picelj (YU-CR), Otto Piene (DE), Karl Reinhartz (DE), Vjenceslav Richter (YU-CR), Paolo Scheggi (IT), Aleksandar Srnec (YU-CR), Sándor Szandaï (HU), Miroslav Šutej (YU-CR), Paul Talman (CH), Gabriele De Vecchi (IT), Yvaral (FR).

Artists participating in NT 4-Latest Examples of Research

Anonima Group (Ernst Benkert, Francis Hewitt, Edwin Mieczkowski) (US), Marina Apollonio (IT), Art Research Centre (John F. Abbick, Peter Clapp, Nancy A. Stephens, Thomas Michael Stephens, Jon Brees Thogmartin (all US), Philip J. Van Voorst (NL/US)), Otto Beckmann (RU/AT), Štefan Belohradský (CS-SK), Alberto Biasi (IT), Jiří Bielecki (CS-CZ), Hartmut Böhm (DE), Alessandro Carlini (IT/DE) and Bernhard Schneider (DE), Boris Cikalovski (YU-CR), Inge Claus-Jansen (DE), Gianni Colombo (IT/DE), Waldemar Cordeiro (IT/BR), Jarmila Čihánková (CS-CZ), Dadamaino (IT), Milan Dobeš (CS-SK), Juraj Dobrović (YU-CR), Angel Duarte (ES/CH), Herbert W. Franke (DE), Bruno Gambone (IT), Karl Gerstner (CH/DE), Rolf Glasmeier (DE), Hans Jörg Glattfelder (CH/IT), Hein Gravenhorst (DE), Dieter Hacker (DE), John Gabriel Harries (UK/IL), Axel Heibel (DE), Jiří Hilmar (CS-CZ), Gottfried Jäger (DE), Reimer Jochims (DE), Wohl Kahlen (DE), Rudolf Kämmer (DE), Tamara Klimová (CS-SK), Radoslav Kratina (CS-CZ), Richard Kriesche (AT), Edoardo Landi (IT), Wolfgang Ludwig (DE), Max Hermann Mahlmann (DE) and Gudrun Mahlmann-Piper (JP/DE), Gruppo MID (IT), Marcello Morandini (IT), Maurizio Nannucci (IT), Koloman Novak (YU-CR/AT), Luigi Pezzato (IT), Helga Philip (AT), Ivan Picelj (YU-CR), Otto Piene (DE), Zoran Radović (YU-SR), Karl Reinhartz (DE), Gruppo Richerche Cibernetiche (Vittorio D'Augusta, Eugenio Lombardini, Flavio Casade, Pino Parini, Giorgio Scarpa, Giulio Tedioli, Antonio Valmaggi) (IT), Vjenceslav Richter (YU-CR), Bernhard Sandfort (DE), Paolo Scheggi (IT), Aleksandar Srnec (YU-CR), Klaus Staudt (DE), Josef Herman Stiegler (AT), Sándor Szandaï (HU), Luis Tomasello (AR/FR), Jorrit Tornquist (AT), Miloš Urbásek (CS-SK), Grazia Varisco (IT), Gabriele De Vecchi (IT), herman de vries (NL).

Exhibition, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti [Gallery of Contemporary Art], Zagreb, 5 May-30 August 1969.

Participating artists

Kurd Alsleben and Cord Passow (DE), Ars intermedia (Otto Beckmann (RU/AT), Alfred Grassl (AT)), Vladimir Bonačić (YU-CR), California Computer Products (Kerry Strand, Larry Jenkins, Doyle Cavin, Dee Hudson, Jane Moon) (US), Compos 68 (Jan Baptist Bedaux, Jeroen Clausman, Arthur Veen) (NL), Waldemar Cordeiro (IT/BR), Charles Csuri (US), Darel D. Eschbach (US), Willam Allan Fetter (US), Alan Mark France (UK), David R. Garrison (US), Jens Harke (DE), Leon D. Harmon and Kenneth C. Knowlton (US), Hiroshi Kawano (JP), Auro Lecci (IT), Robert Mallary (US), Gustav Metzger (DE/UK) (with D. E. Evans, Beverly Rowe and R. J. Stibbs (UK)), Leslie Mezei (HU/CA), Petar Milojević (YU-SR/CA), Frieder Nake (DE/CA), Georg Nees (DE), A. Michael Noll (US), Michael Palyka (US), Ivan Picelj (YU-CR), Rechenzentrum des Instituts Boris Kidrič, Vinča (YU-SR), Manfred Robert Schroeder (DE/US), Lloyd Quinton Summer (US), Alan Sutcliffe (UK), Zdeněk Sýkora (CS-CZ), Evan Harris Walker (US), Edward Zajec (IT/US).

Tendencije 4 - Tendencies 4, 1969

Tendencije 4, Izložba publikacija i knjiga - Tendencies 4, Exhibition of Publications and Books.

ISIP - Internacionalna stalna izložba publikacija, permanent exhibition of international publications, Zagreb, 6 May - 30 August 1969.

Tendencije 5 (Konstruktivna vizuelna istraživanja; Kompjuterska vizuelna istraživanja; Konceptualna umjetnost) - Tendencies 5 (Constructive Visual Research, Computer Visual Research, Conceptual Art).

Exhibition, organized by the Galerija suvremene umjetnosti [Gallery of Contemporary Art], Zagreb. Tehnički muzej [Technical Museum], Zagreb, 1 June - 1 July 1973.

Photographs.

Participating artists

Constructive Visual Research
Vojin Bakić (YU-CR), Milan Dobeš (CS-SK), Juraj Dobrović (YU-CR), Julije Knifer (YU-CR), Julio Le Parc (AR/FR), Enzo Mari (IT), Almir Mavignier (BR/DE), François Morellet (FR), Koloman Novak (YU-SR), Lev Voldemarovič Nusberg (RU), Zoran Radović (YU-SR), Vjenceslav Richter (YU-CR), Jesus Raphael Soto (VE/FR), Aleksandar Srnec (YU-CR), Miroslav Šutej (YU-CR), Victor Vasarely (HU/FR).

Visual Research on Computer
Jose Luis Alexanco (ES), Manuel Barbadillo (ES), Otto Beckmann (AT), Oskar Beckmann (AT), Vladimir Bonačić (YU-CR), Waldemar Cordeiro (IT/BR), Gerardo Delgado (ES), Fanie Dupré (FR), Jacques Dupré (FR), Winfried Fischer (DE), Herbert W. Franke (DE), David R. Garrison (US), Jose Luis Gomez Perales (ES), Jean-Claude Halgand (FR), Grace C. Hertlein (US), Miljenko Horvat (YU-CR/CA), Hervé Huitric (FR), Sture Johannesson and Sten Kallin (SW), Auro Lecci (IT), Jean-Claude Marquette (FR), MBB Computer Graphics (Frank Böttger, Winfried Fischer, Sylvia Roubaud und Gerold Weiss, Johann Willsberger, Rolf Wölk (all DE), Aron Warszawski (IL/DE)), Tomislav Mikulić (YU-CR), Manfred Mohr (DE/FR), Monique Nahas (FR), Georg Nees (DE), Sergej Pavlin (YU-SI), Manuel Quejido (ES), Ludwig Rase (DE), Lillian Schwartz (US), Ana and Javier Seguí (ES), John Whitney (US), Edward Zajec (IT), Anton Zöttl (DE), Vilko Žiljak (YU-CR).

Conceptual Art
Anonymous Collective (HU), Giovanni Anselmo (IT), John Baldessari (US), Angelo Bozzolla (IT/UK), Daniel Buren (FR), Radomir Damnjanović-Damnjan (YU-SR), Antonio Dias (BR/IT), Braco Dimitrijević (YU-CR), Barry Flanagan (UK), Iannis Kounellis (GR/IT), Douglas Huebler (US), László Kerekes (YU-SR), Sol LeWitt (US), Slavko Matković (YU-SR), Giulio Paolini (IT), Giuseppe Penone (IT), Reiner Ruthenbeck (DE), Howard Selina (UK), László Szalma (YU-SR), Bálint Szombathy (YU-SR), Ilija Šoškić (YU-ME), Goran Trbuljak (YU-CR).

Colloquia, symposia

November 3, 1962
New Tendencies artists meet at the studio of the Groupe de Recherche d' Art Visuel (GRAV), Paris

August 18, 1965
Participants in NT3 meet
Castle Brezovica, Brezovica, near Zagreb

ca May 1968
Jury meeting

3-4 August 1968
Tendencies 4, Computer and Visual Research
Colloquium and exhibition of publications on the same theme
Centar za kulturu i informacije, Center for Culture and Information, Zagreb

January 10-12, 1969
Tendencies 4, Computer and Visual Research
Informational seminar
Organized in cooperation with the Yugoslavian section of the AICA (Association Internationale de Critique d'Art)
Centar za kulturu i informacije, Center for Culture and Information, Zagreb

May 5-6, 1969
Tendencies 4, Computer and Visual Research
International symposium
Radničko sveučilište Moša Pijade, Moša Pijade Workers' University, Zagreb

June 26-27, 1971
Art and Computers 71
Colloquium
Radničko sveučilište Moša Pijade, Moša Pijade Workers' University Zagreb

2 June 1973
Tendenzen 5 - The rational and irational in visual research today - Match of ideas
Symposion at the AICA Congress (Association Internationale de Critique d'Art)
Hotel Esplanade, Zagreb

13-14 October 1978
Tendencies 6
International symposium
Centar za kulturu i informacije, Center for Culture and Information, Zagreb

Between 1961 and 1973, the Gallery of Contemporary Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art) organized five international exhibitions entitled New Tendencies. The first New Tendencies exhibition was organized on the initiative of the art historians Matko Meštrović, Radoslav Putar, Božo Bek and Boris Kelemen, and the artists Ivan Picelj and Almir Mavignier. The New Tendencies strived at a synthesis of different forms of the arts of the 1960s and 1970s. In the beginning, the movement characterized broad issues but later the exhibitions veered towards neo-constructivism, lumino-kinetic objects (mostly mechanically made, often under group authorship) and finally computer art and conceptual art. The first exhibition (1961) - apart from the participants such as Almir Mavignier, Zero Group (Oto Peine, Hienz Mack) and Azimuth Group (Enrico Castellani, Piero Manzoni) - contained works that were bent mostly on a system research (Francois Morellet, Karl Gerstner) and optical research of the surface and the structure of objects ( Marc Adrian, Julio Le Park, Gunther Uecker, Gruppo N - Biasi, Massironi, Chiggio, Costa, Landi). The origins of the preprogrammed and kinetic art whose characteristic language would mark New Tendencies as a movement as early as their following exhibition (1963) had also been noted. The demands for the scientification of art favored experimenting with new technical media as a means of researching the visual perception based on the Gestalt theory. The third exhibition of New Tendencies (1965) probed the relationship between cybernetics and art and a symposium on the same topic preceded the exhibition. Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec and Ivan Picelj exhibited lumino-kinetic objects. The fourth exhibition (1968/69) was dominated by the information theory and encompassed an international conference entitled Kompjuteri i vizualna istrazivanja. The same year, the Gallery of Contemporary Art started the Bit international magazine. I have to mention the computer light installation by Vladimir Bonacic DIN.21 as a paradigm for media art coming from the sphere of science. The work was installed in 1968 on the facade of the NAMA department store in Zagreb and was intended as a permanent exhibit. In 1968, Vladimir Bonacic and Ivan Picelj realized T4, an electronic (and computer programmed) object. Beside the computerized visual research section, a conceptual art section was also included in Tendencies 5 (1973). Vilko Ziljak exhibited ASCCI photographs, i.e. digital printouts. Tomislav Mikulic, working for the television where he made intentional computer animation and television graphics, created an artistic computer movie 1973. In the early stages of the development of media art since the 1960s, we note two, at the time irreconcilable sources: modernist (supporting the idea of progress and science) and the anarchistic-individual approach of conceptual art (building on the achievements of the student movements from the 1960s). Conceptual art and computer art were prominently marked on the Tendencies 5 exhibition poster. Matko Mestrovic was the main theorist of New Tendencies as a movement who tackled the problem of the relationship between art and society demanding the socialization of arts, abolishing the unique significance of a work of art and equaling art and science. See more on Tendencies under Institutions, data bases, and the on-line catalogue of a collection of works of early computer art by MSU exhibited as part of the I Am Still Alive project (2000).

From: Darko Fritz, "A brief overview of media art in Croatia (since 1960s)", 2003.

Nova tendencija 3, ed. Božo Bek, Zagreb: Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, 1965, [177] pp. Texts by Matko Meštrović, Rudi Supek, Giulio Carlo Argan, Umbro Aplonio, Palma Bucarelli, Maifredo Massironi, Giuseppe Gatt, Elisa Debenedetti, Rolf Wedewer, Ed Sommer, Vjenceslav Richter, Karl Gerstner, Emilio Vedova, Waldemar Cordeiro, Frank Popper, Miša Bašičević, Herman De Vries, Lev Nusberg, Francis Hewitt, Edwin Mieczkiovski, Paolo Bonaiuto, François Molnar, Abraham Moles. [1] (Serbo-Croatian)/(French),(German),(Italian),(English)

Tendencije 4 / Tendencies 4: Zagreb, 1968-1969, eds. Boris Kelemen and Radoslav Putar, Zagreb: Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, 1970, [146] pp. Texts and statements by Radoslav Putar, Almir Mavignier, Matko Meštrović, Enzo Mari, Alessandro Carlini, Bernhard Schneider, Alberto Biasi, Gianni Colombo, Milan Dobeš, Herbert W. Franke, Karl Gerstner, Rolf Glasmeier, Rolf Gravenhorst, Hein Gravenhorst, Dieter Hacker, John Gabriel Harries, Gottfried Jäger, Richard Kriesche, Max H. Mahlmann, Marcello Morandini, Zoran Radović, Bernhard Sandfort, Paolo Scheggi, Klaus Staudt, Josef Hermann Stiegler, Jorrit Tornquist, Gabriele de Vecchi, Herman de Vries. (Serbo-Croatian)/(French),(German),(Italian),(English)

Tendencije 5 / Tendencies 5, 2nd ed., eds. Božo Bek, Boris Kelemen and Marijan Susovski, Zagreb: Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, 1973, [137] pp. Texts by Radoslav Putar, Božo Bek, Boris Kelemen, Marijan Susovski, Nena Dimitrijević. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English)

Bit International: teorija informacija i nova estetika, 9 numbers (7 issues), ed. Božo Bek, Zagreb: Galerije grada Zagreba, 1968-72.

1, The Theory of Informations and the New Aesthetics / Teorija informacija i nova estetika, eds. Dimitrije Bašičević and Ivan Picelj, 1968, 129 pp. Texts by Matko Meštrović, Abraham A. Moles (3x), Max Bense, and Radoslav Putar. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English),(French),(German)

2, Computers and Visual Research / Kompjuteri i vizualna istraživanja, eds. Boris Kelemen and Radoslav Putar, 1968, 136 pp. Texts by Ješa Denegri, Herbert W. Franke, Hiroshi Kawano, Georg Nees, Frieder Nake, Michael A. Noll, M.R. Schroeder, Leslie Mezei, Petar Milojević, and Marijan Vejvoda. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English),(German)

3, International Colloquy Computers and Visual Research, Zagreb, August 3-4, 1968 / Internacionalni kolokvij kompjuteri i vizuelna istraživanja, 3-4 kolovoz 1968, eds. Boris Kelemen and Radoslav Putar, 1968, 143 pp. Texts by Abraham A. Moles (2x), Marc Adrian, Vjenceslav Richter, Alberto Biasi, Frieder Nake, Matko Meštrović, Vladimir Bonačić, Vladimir Muljević, Božo Težak, Branimir Makanec, Zdenko Šternberg, Jiří Valoch, Kurd Alsleben, Herbert W. Franke, and Leslie Mezei. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English),(French),(German),(Italian)

4, Design / Dizajn, ed. Matko Meštrović, 1969, 120 pp. Texts by Matko Meštrović, Tomas Maldonado (3x), Gui Bonsiepe (3x), Claude Schnaidt, Radoslav Putar, Vera Horvat-Pintarić, and Fedor Kritovac. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English)

5-6, The Word Image: poésie concrète / Oslikovljena riječ: konkretna poezija, ed. Vera Horvat-Pintarić, 1969, 145 pp. Texts by Vera Horvat-Pintarić, Branimir Donat, Max Bense, Tomaž Brejc, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Željko Bujas. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English),(French),(German)

7: Dialogue with the Machine, 1971, 169 pp. Texts by Gordon Hyde/Jonathan Benthall/Gustav Metzger (2x), Kurd Alsleben (2x), Vera Horvat-Pintarić, Herbert W. Franke, Martin Krampen, Frieder Nake (2x), Josef Hlaváček, Leslie Mezei, Hiroshi Kawano, Petar Milojević, Charles Csuri, Robert Mallary, Vladimir Bonačić, J.B. Bedaux/J. Clausmann/A. Veen, Karl Gerstner, and Marc Adrian. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English),(German)

8-9, Television Today / Televizija danas, ed. Vera Horvat-Pintarić, 1972, 245 pp. Texts by Pierre Schaeffer (2x), Abraham A. Moles, Martin Krampen, Gillo Dorfles, Umberto Eco, Gianfranco Bettetini, Matko Meštrović, Edward L. Palmer, Ivo Škarić, Vera Horvat-Pintarić, John S. Margolies, Renato Barilli, Vicenzo Agnetti, J.L. Alexanco, and Gianfranco Bettetini. (Serbo-Croatian)/(English),(French),(German),(Italian)

Constructivism and Kinetic Art: Exat 51, New Tendencies, City Gallery, Zagreb, May-July 1995. Curator: Marijan Susovski.

I Am Still Alive, PM Gallery, Zagreb, 14-28 May 2000. Curator: Darko Fritz.

Exat-51, Centro Cultural de Cascais, Cascais, May-June 2001.

Bit international. (New) Tendencies. Computers and Visual Research, Zagreb 1961-1973, Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, 28 Apr-17 Jun 2007. Curator: Darko Fritz.

Bit international. (New) Tendencies. Computers and Visual Research, Zagreb 1961-1973, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2008-09. Curators: Darko Fritz with Margit Rosen and Peter Weibel.

New Tendencies and Architecture: Abstraction, Ambience, Algorithm, International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, 8 Aug 2014.

Digitalna umjetnost u Hrvatskoj 1968-1984, Tehnički muzej Nikola Tesla, Zagreb, 2021-. Online exhibition.

Other events

Nove Tendencije / Nuove Tendenze Art and Architecture in the 60's: Zagreb - Milano, conference, organised by Alessandro De Magistris and Ivica Covic, 30 May 2012. [3]

Constructivism and Kinetic Art: Exat 51, New Tendencies, ed. Marijan Susovski, Zagreb: City Gallery, 1995. (English),(Croatian)

Exat 51 & New Tendencies: Avant-garde and international events in croatian art in the 1950s and 1960s, Zagreb: MSU, 2002.

Bit international: (Nove) tendencije - Computer und visuelle Forschung, Zagreb 1961-1973, ed. Peter Weibel, Graz: Neue Galerie Graz, 2007, 57 pp. (German)

bit international. (Nove) tendencije - Computer und visuelle Forschung, Zagreb 1961-1973, eds. Peter Weibel and Margit Rosen, Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2007, 95 pp. (German)

Nowa sztuka dla nowego społeczeństwa / New Art For New Society, eds. Jasna Jakšić and Ivana Kancir, Wrocław: Muzeum Współczesne Wrocław, 2015, 296 pp. Texts by Alberto Biasi, Ida Biard, Ješa Denegri, Herbert W. Franke, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Jasna Jakšić and Ivana Kancir, Želimir Koščević, Davor Matičević, Matko Meštrović, Tomislav Mikulić, Frieder Nake, Goran Trbuljak, Radoslav Putar, Vjenceslav Richter, Marijan Susovski. [5] [6] (Polish)/(English)

Jerko Denegri, Umjetnost konstruktivnog pristupa: Exat 51 i Nove tendencije. Zagreb: Horetzky, 2000, 620 pp. [7] (Croatian)
Constructive Approach Art: Exat 51 and New Tendencies, Zagreb: Horetzky, 2004, 336 pp. [8] (English)

Eugen Franković, "Uz Novu tendenciju 3", Život umjetnosti 1, Zagreb, 1966, pp 78-82. Review. [9] (Serbo-Croatian)

Zvonko Maković, "Uz izložbu nt4. Zagreb, Muzej za umjetnost i obrt i Galerija suvremene umjetnosti", Život umjetnosti 10, Zagreb, 1969, pp 168-172. Exhibition review. [10] (Serbo-Croatian)

Matko Meštrović, "Art and Technology - Yesterday and today", 1998. (English)

Darko Fritz, "Amnesia International: Early Computer Art and the Tendencies Movement", 2000. (English)

Matko Meštrović, "Computer and Visual Research: Ways of Thinking and Scope of Acting", 2004. (English)

Christoph Klütsch, "The Summer 1968 in London and Zagreb: Starting or End Point for Computer Art?", 2005. (English)

Ješa Denegri, "Die Bedingungen und Umstände, die den ersten beiden Ausstellungen der Nove Tendencije in Zagreb (1961-1963) vorausgingen", 2007. (German)

Margit Rosen, "Die Maschinen sind angekommen. Die (Neuen) Tendenzen - visuelle Forschung und Computer", 2007. (German)

Peter Weibel, "Kunst als K hoch 8. Eine Korrektur", 2007. [11] (German)

Darko Fritz, "New Tendencies / Nove tendencije", Oris 10:54, Zagreb: Arhitekst, 2008, pp 176-191. (English)/(Croatian)

Ljiljana Kolešnik, "A Decade of Freedom, Hope and Lost Illusions. Yugoslav Society in the 1960s as a Framework for New Tendencies", Rad. Inst. povij. umjet. 34, 2010, pp 211-224. [12] (English)

Giovanni Rubino, The New Tendency: Visual, Kinetic and Programmed Works of Art Through Exhibitions and the Art Critique Between Italy and Croatia from 1963 to 1967, Udine: Università degli Studi di Udine, 2012, 454 pp. PhD dissertation. [13] (English)

Ljiljana Kolešnik, Nikola Bojić, Artur Šilić, "Rekonstrukcija osobne mreže Almira Mavigniera i njezina relacija prema prvoj izložbi Novih tendencija. Primjer primjene mrežne analize i mrežnih vizualizacija u povijesti umjetnosti" / "Reconstruction of Almir Mavignier's Personal Network and its Relation to the First New Tendencies Exhibition. The Example of the Application of Network Analysis and Network Visualisation in Art History", Život umjetnosti 99, Zagreb, 2016, pp 58-79. [14] (Croatian)/(English)

Ivana Bago, "Yugoslavia as World History: The Political Economy of Self-Managed Art", ARTMargins 8:1, Feb 2019, pp 73-93. [15] (English)

Ivana Bago, "Nove Tendencije 2 [New Tendencies 2], Gallery of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 1963", in Contemporary Art and Capitalist Modernization: A Transregional Perspective, ed. Octavian Esanu, Routledge, 2020. [16] [17] (English)

Nove tendencije Zagreb 1961-1973, dir. Vladislav Knežević, HRT, 2010, 60 min. [18]

Art exhibitions and events

Second Spring Exhibition of OBMOKhU (Moscow, 1920-21), Congress of International Progressive Artists (Düsseldorf, 1922), Congress of the Constructivists and Dadaists (Weimar, 1922), First Russian Art Exhibition (Berlin, 1922), New Art Exhibition (Vilnius, 1923), Zenit Exhibition (Belgrade, 1924), Contimporanul Exhibition (Bucharest, 1924), Machine-Age Exposition (New York, 1927), a.r. International Collection of Modern Art (Łódź, 1931), New Tendencies (Zagreb, 1961-73), The Responsive Eye (New York, 1965), 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering (New York, 1966), Cybernetic Serendipity (London, 1968), Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Bern, 1969), Information (New York, 1970), Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art (New York, 1970), Documenta 5 (Kassel, 1972), Pictures (New York, 1977), Biennial of Dissent (Venice, 1977), Les Immatériaux (Paris, 1985), Magiciens de la Terre (Paris, 1989), Hybrid Workspace (Kassel, 1997)

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During the period 1961-1973, five international exhibitions were organized under the title New Tendencies in Zagreb, Croatia/Yugoslavia. They continued the development of ideas raised by Exat 51 during the 1950s, and formed part of the broader European post-informel art movement in the 1960s and 70s.

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Ruptura in 1952 at MAM, Sao Paulo, Brazil

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Ruptura in 1952 at MAM, Sao Paulo, Brazil

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The São Paulo-based Grupo ruptura was founded in 1952 by artists Waldemar Cordeiro (1925–1973), Luis Sacilotto (1924–2003), Lothar Charoux (1912–1987), and Geraldo de Barros (1923–1998), among others. Basing their activities on the theoretical principles elaborated by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg in 1930 and the Swiss artist Max Bill, the Grupo ruptura promoted objectivity, seeking to exclude representation and eliminating any trace of subjectivity. In contrast, the principles of Concretismo —established in São Paulo in 1952—were defined more by a mathematical and geometrical logic that determined the final aesthetic form. On one hand, Waldemar Cordeiro’s Idéia visível [Visible Idea] (1956)—a visual ideogram featuring the progressive repetition of vanishing lines that play with the viewer’s perception—illustrates the group’s use of industrial paints, modular elements, and an objective, rational approach concerning the artistic structure.

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Seventy years later, MAM São Paulo revisits the exhibition that marked the beginning of concrete art in Brazil, held by the Ruptura group at the museum in 1952 - and which lasted just 12 days. Rupture and the group: abstraction and concrete art, 70 years opens on the 2.4th, Saturday, and is curated by Heloisa Espada and Yuri Quevedo.

Circles with alternating movement, 1956, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, MAM São Paulo collection, Acquisition: Fund for the acquisition of works for the MAM-SP collection - Banco Bradesco SA, 1999; photo: Romulo Fialdini

On that occasion, Ruptura released a homonymous manifesto that criticized figuration and, without mentioning abstraction or concrete art, pointed to these languages as being the new thing in art. The members proposed the "renewal of the essential values of visual art" through geometric research, bringing art and industry closer together.

According to Espada, "Looking at the Ruptura group today does not mean uncritically adhering to the ideas presented in the 1950s, but considering the circumstances of their emergence, as well as the various contradictions between what the artists wrote and what they did. Even so, the visual research of these artists had a libertarian connotation, as it proposed to imagine new ways of organizing the post-war world".

Untitled - São Paulo - Brazil, circa 1947, Geraldo de Barros, MAM São Paulo collection, Sponsored by Petrobrás, 2001; photo: Romulo Fialdini

Throughout the 1950s, Ruptura participants were: Anatol Wladyslaw, Geraldo de Barros, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, Kazmer Féjer, Leopold Haar, Lothar Charoux, Luiz Sacilotto, Maurício Nogueira Lima and Waldemar Cordeiro, leader and main theoretician. The only woman to participate in the group, Judith Lauand will win an individual at Masp in November this year.

The collective defended a non-figurative art. For the members, only colors, lines and shapes were real, as they did not simulate any appearance. They adhered to the repetition and laws of the theory of perception known as Gestalt, creating a sense of movement and visual rhythm in their work.

Untitled, 1955, Anatol Wladyslaw, MAM São Paulo collection, donation Blanka Wladislaw, 2007; photo: Romulo Fialdini

The new exhibition intends to present a critical reinterpretation of the legacy of constructive art in Brazil. First, it resumes the original show through documents and works, including two paintings that were at MAM in 1952 and created in that same year: Optical development of the Archimedes spiral, by Waldemar Cordeiro, and vertical vibrations, by Luiz Sacilotto.

Afterwards, it discusses the group's production during the 1950s, when some artists left and new names approached the group, such as Judith Lauand. "There is a debate if the Ruptura group existed as such only in the 1952 exhibition, or if it has a longer duration. This doubt is clarified when we read the testimonials of the artists who joined later, and continued to refer to themselves as part of Ruptura. We also noticed the proximity when looking at the works, because there is a coherence of concerns between them and a coincidence of the problems they face", explains Yuri Quevedo.

Highlight for rarely seen works by Leopold Haar that will be in the exhibition. "Haar is one of the artists who best exemplifies Ruptura's proposal that art should have a practical application in people's lives," explains Espada. Quevedo adds that "The group defended abstraction as a transformation project, capable of permeating people's daily lives, influencing industry and organizing life in its most diverse scales: from plastic arts to design, from architecture to the city."

In direct dialogue, MAM will host the exhibition until June Samson Flexor: beyond modern, precursor of Brazilian abstraction and master of names such as Anatol Wladyslaw.
Rupture and the group: abstraction and concrete art, 70 years
Date: April 2 to July 3, 2022

Location: MAM Sao Paulo

Address: Parque Ibirapuera (Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/nº - Gates 1 and 3)

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (with last entry at 5:30 pm)

Ticket: R$25 (free on Sundays)

Prior appointment by link

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MAM São Paulo revê mostra histórica do grupo Ruptura

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Seventy years later, MAM São Paulo revisits the exhibition that marked the beginning of concrete art in Brazil, held by the Ruptura group at the museum in 1952 - and which lasted just 12 days. Rupture and the group: abstraction and concrete art, 70 years opens on the 2.4th, Saturday, and is curated by Heloisa Espada and Yuri Quevedo.

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 Hong Kong City Vibrance               26 March 1992 -  2 May 1992 

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 Hong Kong City Vibrance               26 March 1992 -  2 May 1992 

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香港城市變奏展
VENUE

Hong Kong Museum of Art,
香港藝術館,
Hong Kong

ARTIST

Antonio MAK, 麥顯揚, CHAN Chiling, 陳志玲, CHAN Wai Bong Clement, 陳偉邦, CHAN Yuk Keung Kurt, 陳育強, CHOI Yan Chi, 蔡仞姿, CHU Hingwah, 朱興華, CHUNG Taifu, 鍾大富, Comyn MO, 毛文羽, Danny YUNG, 榮念曾, Ellen PAU, 鮑藹倫, FUNG Mei Wah May, 馮美華, Gaylord CHAN, 陳餘生, Hai Tien, 趙海天, HO Hing Kay Oscar, 何慶基, HO Siukee, 何兆基, HON Chi-fun, 韓志勳, Jackson YU, 尤紹曾, Joseph FUNG, 馮漢紀, Josh HON, 韓偉康, KWONG Yeuting, 鄺耀鼎, LAM Winghon Eric, 林永漢, LAM Woontong, 林煥棠, LAM Yukfai, 林旭輝, LAU Chingping, 劉清平, LAU Siuhong Freeman, 劉小康, LEE Tze Leung Terence, 李梓良, LI Kikwok Victor, 李其國, LI Weihan Rosanna, 李慧嫻, LUI Chunkwong, 呂振光, PUN Sou Sydney, 潘泝, Randi Cass LINK, Rosamond BROWN, 白朗露, SZE Stella Kitling, 施潔玲, TANG Ying Chi Stella, 鄧凝姿, TONG Kwokfai, 唐國徽, Tung Lo, 童路, VAN Lau, 文樓, WANG Hai, 王亥, WONG Keechee, 黃奇智, WONG Puikong, 黃配江, WONG Shunkit, 王純杰, WONG Wo Bik, 王禾璧, YEUNG Sau Churk Ricky, 楊秀卓, YEUNG Tong Lung, 楊東龍, Yvonne Yuenman LO, 盧婉雯, ZHENG Siaoping

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City Vibrance: Recent Works in Western Media by Hong Kong Artists 

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City Vibrance: Recent Works in Western Media by Hong Kong Artists 

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City Vibrance: Recent Works in Western Media by Hong Kong Artists

(Chinese: 城市變奏 : 香港藝術家西方媒介近作展) was an art exhibition held at the Hong Kong Museum of Art from 27 March to 2 May 1992.

It showcased the work of a broad cross-section of contemporary Hong Kong artists using a wide range of art media.