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KUNSTLANDSCHAFT – Blind spots, black holes
What might initially appear to be a typical Central European living room from the 1970s/ 1980s unfolds as a thought-provoking landscape of mismatched objects. The photo wallpaper enticed residents with dreams of faraway, exotic landscapes. While a foreign visitor might see the photo-wallpaper in KUNSTLANDSCHAFT as an Alpine landscape – now barren due to climate change, a local would recognize the omnipresent scar on the city - the Marianska Skala quarry, which symbolizes the emotionally turbulent city of Ústí nad Labem. Demolitions serve various purposes. They can be acts of destruction for their own sake, as in wars. They can clear space for something new, for exploiting resources (regardless of environmental issues) for economic profit, or for new visions – as in the case of ”Peace Square”, an ongoing construction site in the city center of Ústí nad Labem that stands as perhaps the most powerful yet unintentional “monument” to the ongoing search for peace. A double slide projection references the history of the artist’s father and grandfather, expelled as Sudetendeutsche from Ústí nad Labem in 1945. With KUNSTLANDSCHAFT Barbara Holub stages the silence – the silence of the archive, always incomplete, and the silence of paradoxes, as Noit Banai states in her text Untold Narratives: “The partiality of the archive is both a condition for violence and an impulse for hope.” In today’s turbulent world, in which democracy and civic engagement are again increasingly under threat KUNSTLANDSCHAFT re-examines the sense of belonging, of sharing, of „togetherhood“ that transcends national borders and ethnic backgrounds. Visitors are invited to clean the lithographic stone for imagining the macro-utopia of such a “Kunstlandschaft” — an ”art-landscape”. |
Ident
House of Arts, Ústí nad Labem (CZ) Opening: Dec.4, 2024: starting with performances at 4:30 pm Exhibition: Dec.4., 2024 – March 8, 2025 Curated by: Michal Koleček Artists: Pavlína Fichta Čierna (SK), Barbara Holub (AT), Valérie Leray (FR/DE), Darja Lukjanenko (UA/CZ), Silvie Milková (CZ), RAFANI (CZ), Zdeněk Svejkovský (CZ), Michaela Thelenová (CZ), Slaven Tolj (HR), Franziska Windolf (DE) |
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