(Minneapolis, USA)
The Walker Center presents from November 20th, 2016 – May 21st, 2017, the group exhibition “Question the Wall Itself” featuring works by PIPA 2011 finalist, Jonathas de Andrade. On November 20th-21st, Avant Museology, a two-day symposium will be held in conjunction with the exhibition and will explore the practices and sociopolitical implications of contemporary museology
Question the Wall Itself examines ways that interior spaces and décor can be fundamental to the understanding of cultural identity. The multimedia exhibition showcases work by 23 international, multigenerational artists who explore the political and social dimensions of interior architecture as well as its complicated relationship to history and their own backgrounds. The show presents a breadth of pieces conceived as rooms—from the anteroom, prison cell, and living room to the library, showroom, and garden. Through the artists’ examinations of such spaces—both public and private—the contexts of these environments are revealed. Featured in the exhibition, which includes several new commissions, are works by Jonathas de Andrade, Uri Aran, Nina Beier, Marcel Broodthaers, Tom Burr, Alejandro Cesarco, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Theaster Gates, Ull Hohn, Janette Laverrière/Nairy Baghramian, Louise Lawler, Nick Mauss, Park McArthur, Lucy McKenzie, Shahryar Nashat, Walid Raad, Seth Siegelaub, Paul Sietsema, Florine Stettheimer, Rosemarie Trockel, Cerith Wyn Evans, Danh Vo, and Akram Zaatari.
The exhibition takes as its guiding principal what Belgian artist and poet Marcel Broodthaers termed “esprit décor,” a critique of ideas of nationality, the effects of globalization, and the space of the institution through constructed interior scenes. Recasting our conception of interior space and design, the works on view exist between artwork, prop, and set or stage.
The Walker-produced catalogue will include an extensive photographic walk-through of the installations as well as contributions from the participating artists, expanding the material in the form of a book-as-exhibition and capturing the show’s site-specific nature. The show is curated by Fionn Meade with Jordan Carter.
Avant Museology, a two-day symposium (November 20th–21st) co-presented by the Walker, e-flux, and the University of Minnesota Press will be held in conjunction with the exhibition.
Taking its cue from the recently published book Avant-Garde Museology, the symposium will address the memory machine of the contemporary museum vis-à-vis its relationship to the contemporary artistic practices, sociopolitical contexts, and theoretical legacies that shape and animate it. Where the museum may have once been a mere container for objects and ephemera, the mutability of the contemporary museum has facilitated the apparently seamless absorption of its own complex histories, paradoxical politics, and socioeconomic functions and ideas. It begs the question: can contemporary museology be invested with the energy of the visionary and political projects contained in the works that it circulates and remembers?
On Sunday, November 20th, Jonathas de Andrade and Adrienne Edwards will discuss the ways his bodies of work interrogate social, economic, and political systems, often through fugitive acts that rely on and articulate the fleeting dimensions of memory, history, mythology, and desire. The conversation focuses on Andrade’s multifaceted project Museu do Homem do Nordeste (Museum of the Northeastern Man; 2013 –), realized as private and chance encounters to create photographic portraits that culminate in a dynamic poster installation to a conceptual and material framework for his recent solo museum exhibition at the Museu de Arte do Rio, in which he redeploys notable marketing tactics such as brand development into art objects. Their dialogue delves into the complicated notion of the Brazilian imaginary as espoused by sociologist Gilbreto Freire, who founded the museum in 1979 for which these artworks are named, as well as authored the seminal text Grande e Senzala (The Master and the Slaves), first published in 1933. Click here to view the complete schedule of Avant Museology.
Jonathas de Andrade is an artist based in Recife, Brazil. De Andrade investigates social, political, cultural, and ideological issues at risk of vanishing from collective memory: what humanity chooses to retain or allows to sink into oblivion. Through a variety of processes involving photography, research, documentation, and personal experience, de Andrade summons up a slice of memory and offers a deliberation on various forms of collective amnesia. His work has been shown in exhibitions such as Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today at the Guggenheim Museum and the 12 Lyon Biennale. In 2012, his participation in the Future Generation Art Prize 2012 exhibition by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation earned him a special jury prize
“Question the Wall Itself”
November 20th, 2016 – May 21st, 2017
An exhibition curated by Walker Art Center Artistic Director Fionn Meade with Jordan Carter, featuring the work of Jonathas de Andrade, Uri Aran, Nina Beier, Marcel Broodthaers, Tom Burr, Alejandro Cesarco, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Theaster Gates, Ull Hohn, Janette Laverrière/Nairy Baghramian, Louise Lawler, Nick Mauss, Park McArthur, Lucy McKenzie, Shahryar Nashat, Walid Raad, Seth Siegelaub, Paul Sietsema, Florine Stettheimer, Rosemarie Trockel, Danh Vo, Cerith Wyn Evans, and Akram Zaatari.
Walker Arts Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN, 55403
Tues-Sun: 11am-6pm (Closed on Monday)
info@walkerart.org