Mar. 31, 2023
Berlin Art Link highlights not only Berlin’s most worthwhile art exhibitions, but presentations and events happening all over the world. Every month, a new Worldwide Hit List brings to the limelight artists, galleries, museums and new projects touching on a variety of topics, employing multiple media and featuring diverse subjects. Below are some of the stand-outs that we’ve selected for the month of April.
Moderna Museet
Laurie Anderson: ‘Looking into a Mirror Sideways’
Exhibition: Apr. 1–Sep. 3, 2023
modernamuseet.se
Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm, Sweden, click here for map
Laurie Anderson is a legendary figure in American avant-garde art, experimental music and independent culture. While she began her career in performance and video works, over the years she gained prominence as a pioneer of electronic music as well as a writer, composer and filmmaker. Her extensive practice deals with listening, language and storytelling and spans from philosophical and personal contemplations to activist interventions on urgent political issues. Constantly experimenting and up to date with technological developments, nowadays Anderson works with virtual reality and AI. ‘Looking into a Mirror Sideways’ is her largest solo show to date in Europe, and consists of a selection of the artist’s works from the 1970s to the present day, complemented with brand new, site-specific productions. The exhibition serves as a point of contact for both physical materials and techniques—painting, sculpture, analogue photography, sound tapes and film strips—and new digital worlds, well encapsulating Anderson’s spirit and approach to art.
Laurie Anderson: ‘Looking into a Mirror Sideways 1,’ 1975, self-portrait series // Photo by Laurie Anderson, courtesy of the artist and Moderna Museet
ICA Boston
Simone Leigh
Exhibition: Apr. 6–Sep. 4, 2023
icaboston.org
25 Harbor Shore Dr, Boston, MA 02210, United States, click here for map
Simone Leigh is one of the most significant artists working today and a stand-out amongst this month’s international exhibitions. The first ever Black American woman to represent the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Leigh won, alongside British artist Sonia Boyce, the Golden Lion for Best Participant for her exhibition ‘The Milk of Dreams.’ Now, works from the Venice presentation are making their U.S. premiere in Boston, joined by key works from throughout her career, providing an overview of her practice across the disciplines of ceramic, bronze and video. Leigh’s body of work primarily touches on the thematics of history, race, colonialism and gender, and it focuses on Black feminist thought and Black women experience. Through the use of clay, it explores different historical periods, geographies and artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora, and the links between women’s labour and craftwork. The exhibition at ICA is accompanied by a monograph, and offers visitors an opportunity to thoroughly experience Leigh’s complex work.
Simone Leigh: ‘Sovereignity’, 2022, installation view in ‘Simone Leigh: Sovereignty,’ U.S. Pavilion, 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, 2022 // Photo by Timothy Schenck, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery
Osservatorio – Prada Foundation
Dara Birnbaum
Exhibition: Apr. 13–Sep 25, 2023
fondazioneprada.org
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, 20121 Milano MI, Italy, click here for map
‘Dara Birnbaum’ is an extensive survey exhibition dedicated to the work of the American artist, known and internationally acclaimed for her pioneering video, media, and installation work. Curated by Barbara London, with Valentino Catricalà and Eva Fabbris, the exhibition offers an insight into the artist’s career, which has consistently challenged the precepts of art and mass media. ‘Dara Birnbaum’ comprises a selection of single-channel videos, sound works, multi-channel installations, photographs, and 3-D specialised prints on Plexiglas realised by the artist across five decades, from 1975 to 2022. The presentation investigates the cultural intersections of video art, television and consumer technologies and, among other themes, the gendered biases reflected in the representation of women in popular culture.
Dana Birnbaum: ‘Journey: Shadow of the American Dream,’ 2022, video still, 16mm film to 4K digital video. Color, stereo, 35:43 min. from: 6-channel color video installation, stereo sound with 5 channels mono sound, 3 vinyl murals (2 wall and 1 seating platform), black and white // Photo by Dara Birnbaum, courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery
Walker Art Center
Pacita Abad
Exhibition: Apr. 15–Sep 3, 2023
walkerart.org
725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, MN 55403, click here for map
The wide-ranging works of Pacita Abad are the subject of the first-ever retrospective spanning the artist’s 32-year-long career. The prolific artist is best known for her use of textiles, the trapuntos, a medium often associated with female, non-Western labour and therefore historically marginalised as craft. The exhibition includes more than 100 works, most of which have never been on public view in the United States, and features Abad’s experiments with different mediums, including works on paper, costumes, and ceramics. Organised by Walker in collaboration with Abad’s estate, the presentation celebrates her multifaceted work and her long-lasting commitment to give visibility to political refugees and oppressed people living on the periphery of power. The stories referenced in the series include such events as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Haitian refugee crisis, and the detention of Mexican migrant workers at the US border. The exhibition is accompanied by the first major publication on Abad’s work, produced by the Walker.
Pacita Abad: ‘White heightens the awareness of the senses,’ 1998, oil, acrylic, oil pastel, dyed cotton, painted canvas, painted cloth stitched on canvas, 84 x 63 in // Photo courtesy of Pacita Abad Art Estate
S.M.A.K. Museum
Haegue Yang: ‘Several Reenactments’
Exhibition: Apr. 22–Sep. 10, 2023
smak.be
Jan Hoetplein 1, 9000 Gent, Belgium, click here for map
Opening on April 22 at S.M.A.K Museum in Ghent is the first ever solo exhibition of South Korean artist Haegue Yang in Belgium. Yang’s interdisciplinary practice encompasses large-scale sculptures and installations as well as works on paper, photography, video, sound and text. Her works are primarily made of industrially manufactured objects, yet project a richness and depth rooted in their artisanal arrangements. A seemingly oppositional dialectic that is a trademark in all of Yang’s composite works: notions like abstract and figurative, mechanical and organic, traditional and forward-looking constantly mirror and communicate with each other. Her work is concerned with global issues about migration, identity and community, and is inspired by unexpected, imagined encounters, complex cross-linkages and contradictory translations of forms, lives, cultures, eras, traditions and practices.
Haegue Yang: ‘Sonic Female Natives,’ 2023, powder, coated steel frame, powder, coated mesh, ball bearings, casters, stainless steel bells, PVD, coated stainless steel bells, split rings, artificial plants, dried ginger, dried tree, ear mushroom, pine cones, floral tapes,
wires, brooms, nylon cord, rope, scrubbing brush // Photo by Haegue Yang Studio, courtesy of the artist
Dallas Museum of Art
Ja’Tovia Gary: “I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD”
dma.org
Exhibition: Apr. 23–Nov. 5, 2023
1717 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas 75201, click here for map
The DMA’s ‘Concentrations’ exhibition series has been a distinguished project-based platform for emerging artists exhibiting their first museum solo show or debut of a recent body of work, affording them recognition and visibility at a pivotal moment in their practice and career. ‘I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD’ brings together five artworks created by the Dallas-native filmmaker and visual artist Ja’Tovia Gary over the past three years. Featuring a glowing neon script, a newly commissioned sculpture, film sourced from the artist’s family archives and paintings, this multimedia installation is a personal memoir and an evocative presentation of
Gary’s interdisciplinary practice. The artist uses film, installation, and language through a Black feminist subjective lens. Often intimate and politically charged, her work subverts the dominant narratives found in mainstream storytelling and visual culture.
Ja’Tovia Gary: ‘Precious Memories,’ 2020, Installation view in ‘Precious Memories’ in Paula Cooper Gallery, New York // Photo by Steven Probert, courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery
Tate Britain
Isaac Julien: ‘What Freedom is to Me’
tate.org.uk
Exhibition: Apr. 26–Aug. 20, 2023
Millbank, London SW1P 4RG, United Kingdom, click here for map
Celebrated for his compelling lyrical films and his video art installations, Isaac Julien is one of today’s leading artists and filmmakers. His first solo UK exhibition opens on April 26 at Tate Britain, London and includes works spanning across four decades of his career, from the early 1980s through to the present day. The exhibition highlights Julien’s critical approach and the way his career breaks down barriers between different artistic disciplines, and draws from film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture all the while interweaving the themes of desire, history and culture. Works ranging from early films to large-scale, multi-screen installations will be shown, carrying out an investigation of the movement of peoples across different continents, times and spaces.
Isaac Julien: ‘Pas de Deux with Roses (Looking for Langston Vintage Series), 1989/2016, Ilford classic silver gelatin fine art paper, mounted on
aluminium and framed, 58.1 x 74.5 cm // Photo by Isaac Julien, courtesy of the Artist and Victoria Miro
Secession
Karrabing Film Collective
Exhibition: Apr. 28–June 18,2023
secession.at
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna, click here for map
The Karrabing Film Collective is an indigenous film and arts collective formed in Australia in 2008 that uses filmmaking as means of self-organisation, social analysis and resistance. In the Emmiyengal language Karrabing means “low tide” and it also refers to a form of collectivity outside of government-imposed strictures of clanship or land ownership. Their screenings and publications allow them to develop local artistic languages, and audiences to understand new forms of collective Indigenous agency. The collective’s area of interest is the space between fictional and the documentary, the past and the present. Shot on handheld cameras and phones, most of Karrabing’s films are nonlinear narratives that dramatise and satirise daily scenarios or obstacles faced by collective members in their interactions with corporate and state entities. They touch on cultural memory, place, and ancestry, exposing the longstanding facets of colonial violence such as environmental devastation, land restrictions, and economic exploitation.
Karrabing Film Collective: ‘Fish Trap,’ 2021 // Photo courtesy of the artist and Secession
