Due to extensive refurbishment, the museum will be completely closed from the beginning of January 2024 until - probably - the end of May 2024. The mumok will reopen in June 2024 with the exhibition Avantgarde and Liberation. Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism.
The exhibition Avant-Garde and Liberation sheds light on the significance of global modernism for contemporary art. It poses questions about the political circumstances that motivate contemporary artists to draw on those non-European avant-gardes that formed in the 1920s to 1970s in opposition to the dominant Western modernism. What potential do artists see in linking up with decolonial avant-gardes in Africa, Asia and the "Black Atlantic" in order to take a stand against current forms of racism, fundamentalism or neo-colonialism? And what artistic methods are used when threats to personal freedom and social cohesion are addressed with recourse to pioneering anti-colonial and anti-racist positions of the early and mid-20th century?
With numerous works by around thirty artists from South Asia, Africa, Europe and America, Avant-Garde and Liberation opens up a view of global modernisms through the prism of their explosive nature for contemporary art. In the complex combination of present and past, the exhibition reflects on questions of temporality and the possibilities of engaging with old and new liberation movements.
Zoe Leonard, Tipping Point, 2016, stack of 53 books from James Baldwin's first edition, Photo: Simon Vogel, Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Artists: Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Omar Ba, Radcliffe Bailey, Yto Barrada, Mohamed Bourouissa, Diedrick Brackens, Serge Attukwei Clottey, william cordova, Atul Dodiya, Robert Gabris, Jojo Gronostay, Leslie Hewitt, Iman Issa, Janine Jembere, Patricia Kaersenhout, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Zoe Leonard, Vincent Meessen, The Otolith Group, Fahamu Pecou, Faith Ringgold, Cauleen Smith, Maud Sulter, Vivan Sundaram, Moffat Takadiwa, Jack Whitten
June 7 to September 22, 2024
www.mumok.at
