Per la 55a Biennale d'arte la Germania si proporrà come una costellazione di figure da tutto il mondo.
Per questo motivo la curatrice Susanne Gaensheimer ha invitato quattro artisti internazionali provenienti da diversi paesi: Ai Weiwei, Dayanita Singh, Santu Mofokeng, Romuald Karmakar.
Tutti e quattro gli artisti sono legati con la scena artistica tedesca in modo particolare, hanno lavorato in Germania per molti anni, in stretta collaborazione con le istituzioni tedesche. Le loro opere condividono una critica delle realtà individuali e offrono importanti riflessioni sulle culturale del mondo globalizzato.
Curatore: Susanne Gaensheimer (Direttore del Museo MMK für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main)
Artisti :Ai Weiwei Dayanita Singh Santu Mofokeng Romuald Karmakar
Indirizzo: Giardini della Biennale
Web: www.deutscher-pavillon.org
Four artists for the
German Pavilion First information about the German contribution to the 55th
Venice Biennale 2013
Dear Ladies and
Gentlemen,
In May we announced
that Dr. Susanne Gaensheimer, Director of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst
Frankfurt am Main, has been appointed curator of the German Pavilion at the
55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2013 for a second
time consecutively.
Today we would like to
present Susanne Gaensheimer’s curatorial point of departure and the invited
artists for 2013.
With her plans for the
German contribution to the upcoming Venice Biennale, Gaensheimer continues the
transnational approach, which characterized her cooperation with Christoph
Schlingensief in 2010–2011. “My decision to invite Christoph Schlingensief to
Venice was ultimately also influenced by his Africa project, namely the opera
village in Ouagadougou”, Susanne Gaensheimer commented in a press release in
June 2010. “What becomes clear here is that Schlingensief is not only
representative of art in Germany, but that he puts his concerns in a global
context. Planning the opera house in Africa and cooperating with the local
partners there and, importantly, by using the project for self-reflection in
his play Via Intolleranza II, Schlingensief succeeds in giving his analysis of
‘being German’ and the issues associated there with a transnational dimension:
‚ Why are we always so interested in helping the African continent if we can’t
even help ourselves?’ he asked.”
Using diverse forms of
expression to explore the issues of his generation with uncompromising
directness for over 30 years, Christoph Schlingensief pushed the boundaries of
art. For the 2011 German Pavilion he planned to fundamentally address the problems
of the German, European, and western relationship to Africa and to question the
supposed unambiguity of so-called national identities.
In 2013 Gaensheimer
carries forward this critical investigation of the significance of traditional
forms of national representation in the national pavilions at the Venice
Biennale. Contemporary artistic production in Germany, as elsewhere, is
characterized by multilayered forms of cooperation between artists from all
over the world and by international intellectual and cultural exchange.
Therefore, at the Venice Biennale, Germany will not be represented as a
hermetic national unit but as an active participant in a complex, worldwide
constellation. For this reason Gaensheimer has invited four international
artists from different countries:
Ai Weiwei
Romuald Karmakar
Santu Mofokeng
Dayanita Singh
The artists are
represented in major museums and collections throughout the world and have
taken part in important international, large-scale exhibitions and film festivals.
Their works, exhibitions, publications, and films are part of the international
artistic discourse and have in part determined this discourse. In addition, all
four artists are also associated with the German art scene in a particular way.
Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng and Dayanita Singh have been
working in Germany for many years, in close cooperation with German
institutions, publishing houses, and collections. Their works share a critical
reconsideration of the artists’ individual respective realities and offer
important trajectories for reflecting on cultural and social selfconception in
a globalized world. In the process the artists use a large range of media,
including photography and film in addition to sculpture and installation.
On her choice of
artists Gaensheimer says: “Both everyday life and the cultural landscape of
Germany are determined by different religions, economies, and political
approaches. This defines our everyday and leads to mutual enrichment as well as
to confrontation. At the same time it is extremely evident that our society can
no longer function without dialog, collaboration and the addressing of
different philosophies and actual realities. For me, working together with a
group of artists from different countries for the Venice Biennale is also a
logical continuation of my work with Christoph Schlingensief. The artists whom
I invited and their works are representative of a number of issues resulting
from the convergence of diverse ideologies and conceptions of life, which
impact us most immediately today. In the context of the Venice-project it is
important to me that these artists manage to expand our perspectives and give
us access to the view of the other, sometimes in an uncomfortable way. Although
they develop their works out of specific, local contexts, they establish a kind
of universal visual language by integrating their individual experiences of
internationality.”
A publication is
planned to accompany the exhibition in the pavilion and will include a number
of exclusive, new contributions by international authors on the themes
mentioned above as well as texts on the participating artists and an extensive
photographic documentation of their works.
Elke aus dem Moore,
Director of the Art Department of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations
(Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen – ifa) comments: “In the context of the
national pavilions in the Giardini the invitation of these four artists
emphasizes the necessity of transnational collaboration. Susanne Gaensheimer,
who received the Golden Lion in 2011 especially for her curatorial approach,
once again shows a certain courage and vision with her curatorial concept. Both
her concept and her choice of artists focus on art and it’s potential to cross
borders. Gaensheimer addresses central questions of contemporary society and
dares to critically reinterpret the rules of one of the biggest international
cultural events. We are very much looking forward to this
collaboration.”
For a couple of months
we and the invited artists are in direct dialogue with Christine Macel, the
curator of the French Pavilion and Chief Curator at the Musée National d’Art
Moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Anri Sala, the artist invited by France,
about the possibilities of a cooperation between France and Germany. We will
keep you posted on this in the next couple of weeks.
The German
contribution is commissioned by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal
Republic of Germany and will be realized in cooperation with the Institute for
Foreign Cultural Relations (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen – ifa).
