HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig: Dynamic Spaces

June 6 - Au­gust 30, 2020

For the ex­hi­bi­tion HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig: Dy­nam­ic Spaces, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the plat­form Con­tem­po­rary And (C&). Found­ed by Ju­lia Grosse and Yvette Mu­tum­ba, C& sees it­self as “a dy­nam­ic space for is­sues and in­for­ma­tion on con­tem­po­rary art from Afri­ca and its Glob­al Di­as­po­ra.” To this end, C& us­es vari­ous for­mats: the hubs are the on­line art mag­azines Con­tem­po­rary And and Con­tem­po­rary And Améri­ca Lati­na, fea­tur­ing ex­hi­bi­tion re­views, in­ter­views, columns, and news from the in­ter­na­tio­n­al art world. New, dig­i­tal art­works are al­so shown, and a print­ed mag­azine is pub­lished three times a year. The ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sents th­ese ac­tiv­i­ties and C&’s of­f­line pro­jects and con­nects them with other artis­tic po­si­tions.

The long-term pro­ject C& Cen­ter of Unfin­ished Busi­ness will be the fo­cus of Dy­nam­ic Spaces. It is a par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry read­ing room that is ex­pand­ed de­pend­ing on the lo­ca­tion. The core is al­ways en­coun­ters and dia­logues with the re­spec­tive part­n­er and their li­brary. In ad­di­tion to C&’s own col­lec­tion, se­lect­ed publi­ca­tions from the Kunst- und Mu­se­ums­bi­blio­thek Köln and the Ber­lin-based em­pow­er­ment and ed­u­ca­tion pro­ject Each One Teach One e. V. (EO­TO) will be in­te­grat­ed.The publi­ca­tions that come out of th­ese dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to col­lect­ing fo­cus on cul­tu­r­al pro­duc­tions from Afri­ca and the Glob­al Di­as­po­ra. They ques­tion gaps in West­ern-cen­tric art his­to­ry and ad­dress as­pects of the colo­nial past. The read­ing room in­s­talled at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig in­vites vis­i­tors to read, share com­ments, and cont­in­ue unfin­ished dis­cus­sions.

In ad­di­tion, video works by the artist groups The Nest Col­lec­tive and CUSS with Vukani Nde­bele, which were pro­duced by C& for the on­line video plat­form, will be shown for the first time in a mu­se­um. Both groups work at the in­ter­sec­tions of dif­fer­ent so­cial con­texts and of­ten deal with the ur­ban en­vi­ron­ment in a hu­mor­ous way. Their films take place in Nairo­bi and Dur­ban and trans­form ev­ery­day sce­narios in­to a cham­ber play and a hor­ror movie, re­spec­tive­ly. With Nkiru­ka Oparah and Fri­da Oru­pabo, the ex­hi­bi­tion al­so fea­tures two artists whose prac­tice is char­ac­ter­ized by re­flec­tion on Afri­can Di­as­po­ra iden­ti­ty, the ques­tion­ing of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the self and others, the reap­pro­pri­a­tion of im­ages, and the in­flu­ence of vi­su­al cul­tures from the In­ter­net. Oru­pabo’s pic­tures re­volve around top­ics such as re­li­gion, mother­hood, and the sex­u­al­iza­tion of the fe­male Black body. She iso­lates and re­com­bines ev­ery­thing from im­age frag­ments from archives to cur­rent pop cul­ture. This re­sults in works that re­flect the view­er’s gaze and al­so make the un­der­ling pro­jec­tions vis­i­ble. A video work and pa­per col­lages by Fri­da Oru­pabo will be shown. Re­flect­ing on lan­guage, gen­der, and me­m­o­ry, Nkiru­ka Oparah’s art com­bines per­so­n­al and cul­tu­r­al im­ages to cre­ate draw­ings, video col­lages, and ob­jects. For the ex­hi­bi­tion, Oparah is pre­sent­ing a video work on the fic­tio­n­al prime­val spir­it SUOON. The an­i­mat­ed cos­mos of the same name is part of the artist's lat­est mul­ti­me­dia group of works, in which fluid Black iden­ti­ties that tran­s­cend one-sid­ed and rigid la­bels are ar­tic­u­lat­ed.

Dy­nam­ic Spaces is the sixth edi­tion of the on­go­ing pro­ject se­ries HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig. For Yil­maz Dziewior, di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, it ex­em­pli­fies the for­mat, which re­sponds di­rect­ly to cur­rent cul­tu­r­al and so­cial dis­cours­es and is based on col­lab­o­ra­tion and the in­te­gra­tion of vari­ous forms of artis­tic pro­duc­tion.

Artists: Con­tem­po­rary And (C&), The Nest Col­lec­tive, CUSS & Vukani Nde­bele, Nkiru­ka Oparah, Fri­da Oru­pabo

Cu­ra­tor: Rom­i­na Düm­ler

The ex­hi­bi­tion has re­ceived sub­s­tan­tial sup­port from the HERE AND NOW group of mem­bers of the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst am Mu­se­um Lud­wig e.V. and the Storch Foun­da­tion. We would al­so like to thank the Roy­al Nor­we­gian Em­bassy and the OCA (Of­fice for Con­tem­po­rary Art Nor­way) for their sup­port.

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