Remembering Landscape

Exhibition, seminar, accompanying programme

When we think of landscape, most of us imagine an aesthetic ideal – if not unspoiled nature, then at least a diversified, organically developed agricultural and rural living environment. But in reality, landscape has long been altered by war, commercial exploitation, border demarcations and migration. Deformations, ruins and peculiarities of vegetation are testimony to major events of political and economic history. This project by the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Siegen presented a series of artistic positions, highlighting such “traumatic landscapes”. It has interwoven two antipodes – on one hand, the “techno landscape” as the remnants of nature left in the wake of globalised industry, mining and urbanisation, and on the other, the “historical landscape” containing ruins and traces which evoke memories and become monuments in and of themselves.
The exhibition mainly presented contemporary landscape images, but also historical pieces. For example, the surreal pictures of war-ravaged landscapes by the British painter Paul Nash have been displayed alongside the mythological landscapes of Anselm Kiefer. In the monumental photos by Luc Delahaye and the piece “Four Faces of Omarska” by Milica Tomic, the earth is depicted as a (mass) grave. Susanne Kriemann and Alexandra Navratil examine the dissolution of the picturesque landscape into economically exploitable material. The exhibition also presented for the first time Paul Virilio’s “Bunker Archaeology” which documents the German bunkers of World War II interspersed along the Atlantic coast. A comprehensive publication of this photographic project has been published.

Artistic directors: Eva Schmidt, Kai Vöckler
Curators: Branislav Dimitrijević (CS), Călin Dan (RO), Leen Engelen (BE)
Artists: Marianna Christofides (CY), Luc Delahaye (FR), Forensic Architecture (GB), Cyprien Gaillard (FR), Anna Heinlein & Göran Gnaudschun, Markus Karstieß, Jan Kempenaers (BE), Anselm Kiefer, Aglaia Konrad (AT), Susanne Kriemann, et al. as well as a special project by the architect Paul Virilio

Other venues:

MCA, Bukarest: 14.10.2018–1.2.2019; MCA, Belgrad: 7.4.–30.7.2019; Luca School of Arts, Brüssel: 13.10.–31.12.2019

Events

No upcoming events at present

Previous events

  • 10 June, 2018 to 1 October, 2018: Exhibition

    Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen

Contact

Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen

Unteres Schloss 1
57072 Siegen

www.mgksiegen.de (external link, opens in a new window)