Mira Gakjina is the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Skopje, which was founded through a great act of international solidarity. In 1963, Skopje was massively destroyed by an earthquake, many artists donated works and the Skopje Solidarity Collection grew quickly.
For the exhibition No Feeling Is Final. The Skopje Solidarity Collection, Elfie Semotan captured the unique character of Skopje in a photographic series. Her pictures portray Skopje’s cultural diversity – from the Ottoman Old Bazaar to the modernist reconstruction of the city after the 1963 earthquake or, as part of the Skopje 2014 project, the crude attempt to rebuild Skopje as the classicist city it never was.
The artists Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman talk about their exhibition and eponymous film Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims. Their work traverses and interconnects different times and places to reveal the planetary scope and historical depth of pressing geopolitical issues.
Eva Böhm and Martin Walkner guide through the exhibition No Feeling Is Final. The Skopje Solidarity Collection.
Siniša Ilić proposes a recontextualization of the city of Skopje in his spatial installation titled Filigran. His work connects eight abstract sculptural objects from MoCA Skopje’s collection with his own drawings, collages, and moving images, placing them on platforms of varying heights.
Lama El Khatib and Sam Nimmrichter talk to the artists Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman about their exhibition Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims. Defying universalist norms of thought established by the European Enlightenment, Neuman and da Silva counter the linearity of history and the separation of space to interrogate the presence of colonialism now, here, with us.
Gülsün Karamustafa exhibits her painting Window and the sculptural installation The Monument and the Child. Together with a small selection of works from the MoCA Skopje, which all came from a private donation, they are presented in an imaginary family room. Watch the video to learn more about her selection.
In their spatial installation All Things Flowing, Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska introduce a new way of looking at the history of MoCA Skopje. For their work, they studied the architectural designs for the construction of the museum. They developed a motorized sculptural installation and a large-scale typographic mural in dialogue with works from the MoCA Skopje collection by two Macedonian artists: the painter Dushan Perchinkov and the sculptor Aneta Svetieva.
Alexandru Cosarca is a tireless protagonist in the Viennese performance scene who, among other things, initiated the collective format WERISTdICHTER? in 2017. As a host, he brings together artists to negotiate queerness, gender roles, exclusions, and longings in a joyful, yet all the while political way.
His merchandising booth in the exhibition Unfreezing the Scene. Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2022 brings community-building into the exhibition space and is a tribute to the 106 contributing artists.
In the exhibition Unfreezing the Scene. Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2022, Gleb Amankulov shows a series of temporary assemblies referring to the precarious conditions of art production. In an critically engagement with the respective exhibition site, he makes objects from found, bought and furnished elements, which after their temporary display return to the market or to their respective owners to reclaim their lives as domestic objects.
For the exhibition Unfreezing the Scene. Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2022, Julius Pristauz developed the exhibition design together with the architect Muamer Osmanovic. He shows the sculpture bad light (piercing), which was part of his diploma exhibition, the photograph a stage without the performer (01) and the performance between floors with Cæcilie Heldt Rønnow. Pristauz uses a variety of media and formats, repeatedly exploring the construction of identities, as well as tensions between private and public spheres.
Laure Prouvost talks about the homage to grannies and her multimedia installation. Together with Sam Belinfante (light and sound designer of the exhibition), she developed a performance involving soprano Patricia Auchterlonie. Her collaborative practice is also evident in the video, for which she invited both of them to participate.
Eva Böhm and Martin Walkner guide through the exhibition Laure Prouvost. Ohmmm age Oma je ohomma mama.
Tijana Lazović‘s films in the exhibition Unfreezing the Scene. Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2022 are a touching testimony to a deceased friend. Sans Soleil portrays the persistence of memory as a flow through a personal image archive, mixed with found material from the internet. Soleil is its abstract counterpart, showing damaged film footage.
Ramiro Wong’s installation in the exhibition Unfreezing the Scene. Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2022 inhabits a performative space that evokes one of his earliest childhood memories of internal armed conflict in Peru from 1989. He studied at the University of Applied Arts in the transart class with Nita Tandon.
Juliana Lindenhofer talks about her sculptures in the exhibition, which are made of synthetic materials and industrial waxes. Starting from an initial idea, she draws a sketch and then removes herself to give space for chemical reactions.
The artist duo Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman’s exhibition is centred around the coproduction and presentation of a new work: Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims. Parts of the film were shot in the Atacama Desert, the place with the clearest and driest air on the planet and home to the world’s largest radio telescope, which observes the skies. Against this backdrop, the film probes an alternative experience of the world that, rather than primarily seeing, overlooking, and enlightening, is guided by other senses and practices.
We visited Vanessa Schmidt at her studio. Her spatial installations display domestic settings in an abstracted, bare, and anachronistic manner.
We went to see Charlotte Gash‘s studio. The artist combines critique of the mundane with her own personal experiences of the art world to create narratives and counternarratives that open up discussions around working as a contemporary artist.
Charlotte Gash is played by Charlotta Öberg
Brook Andrew’s installation mulunma wiling mangi gudhi (inside the lip of a stolen song) includes eight works from the collection of MoCA Skopje. Brook Andrew placed them on a large-scale, strikingly patterned inflatable object and wall mural. In this video he is telling us more about his artistic practice.
Eva Böhm and Wolfgang Brunner guide through the exhibition Rajkamal Kahlon. Which Side Are You On?
Curator Zdenka Badovinac guides through the exhibition Sanja Iveković. Works of Heart (1974-2022) and shows works from the 50-year career of the artist, who deals with gender issues and political topics.
Rajkamal Kahlon talks about works presented in her exhibition Which Side Are You On?. The artist radically alters colonial images so that her subjects, made into curios by the colonial books’ photographers and authors, reassert their individuality and dignity.
Eva Böhm and Wolfgang Brunner guide through the exhibition Sanja Iveković. Works of Heart (1974–2022).
Eva Böhm and Wolfgang Brunner guide through the exhibition Defiant Muses. Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives of 1970s and 1980s France.
Statement by Nicole Fernández Ferrer, director of the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, in the context of the exhibition Defiant Muses. Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives of 1970s and 1980s France. The Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir was created in 1982 by Carole Roussopoulos, Delphine Seyrig and Ioana Wieder. The feminist activists aimed their cameras at the preservation and creation of audiovisual documents concerning the history of women, their rights, fights and creations.
“I want to encourage viewers to question the messages that are constructed through images.” Anna Spanlang
In her work CEREAL / Soy Claudia, soy Esther y soy Teresa. Soy Ingrid, soy Fabiola y soy Valeria, on view in the exhibition Handspells, Anna Spanlang uses archival material from almost 11 years. She searches for poetic aesthetics in everyday situations recorded on her mobile phone, creating connections between the private and the public.
In the exhibition Handspells, Chin Tsao shows several sculptural works as well as a video installation and a photograph. The sculptures refer to both the contexts of chinoiserie and Art Deco, moments of cultural exchange between Europe and the Far East in the 18th century. With her video work, the artist tries to find a new perspective on the complex relations between technology, culture, economy, and the body, which make our current techno-culture.
“My works are inspired by observations of nature and mythological narratives – by attempts to explain our world.” Nora Severios
Spun from animal and plant fibers, flax, angora rabbit wool, banana fiber, mulberry silk, and more: Nora Severios provides insight into her works, working methods and the relationship between humans, (wild) animals and domestication.