Europe Exists
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Organised by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, with the support of the Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs, the exhibition is part of the official events intended to celebrate the Greek Presidency of the European Union.
Spanish curator Rosa Martínez (Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennale etc.) is the curator responsible for the exhibition, with the special support of the “Agency of Spiritual Guidance” of the Swiss curator Harald Szeemann (Venice Biennale, Documenta V etc). This is the first exhibition that the two curators design together, despite their long acquaintance and previous collaboration on various projects. The exhibition presents works by 30 artists from the 15 European Union member states. The selected pieces draw a fragmented panorama of the aesthetic diversity and ideological concerns of contemporary art. The ideals of the Enlightenment are reviewed through the perspective of postcolonial, class and gender analysis, while irony and pleasure are intended as tools to reflect upon the time and place we live in. Exhibition viewsPreparation & installation |
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
The exhibition catalogue (colour, bilingual), designed by Giannis Epaminondas, includes texts by Rosa Martínez, Harald Szeemann and the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi. The cover features a version for the European flag designed by Rem Koolhaas and Reiner de Graaf (© ΟΜΑ). will also be included.
The title of the exhibition, "© Europe Exists", given by H. Szeemann, comes from one of the ironic stickers that Szeemann produced a while before the exhibition, as a comment to the idea of Europe having a cultural and political identity of its own in this era of globalised imperialism.
Puppet Conference, 2003, Christian Jankowski, © Christian Jankowski (click image to see the video)
Simone Aaberg Kaern
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