- 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

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)

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.

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.[

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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

DATE
7 Mar – 2 May 1992

CURATOR
TSANG C.C. Gerard, 曾柱昭

ORGANISER