Populism

2005 Frankfurter Kunstverein EXHIBITION

May 11 to Sept 4, 2005

Populism was launched in spring 2005 by NIFCA, the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Vilnius, Oslo, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The exhibition project explores the relationships between contemporary art and current populist cultural and political trends.

“Populism has many different faces. Many different things can be called populism for very good reasons. We may not necessarily agree on the meaning of the term populism. And maybe the term populism should not necessarily have only one meaning. The usefulness of a term with different meanings resides in the fact that it may hint at family resemblances between different phenomena called populism. Therefore, in any project on populism, it might soon appear that the contributors – artists, academics, writers and other intellectuals – will use the word in many different ways” (Dieter Lesage, “Populism and Democracy”, 2005, in The Populism Reader)

The Populism project tried to formulate concrete spaces for experience, reflection, and discussion linked to a contemporary political and cultural phenomenon that is as complex as it is widespread. There is little doubt that populist movements gain large parts of their persuasive power from their ability to play on affects and desires that are supposedly exempt from the procedures that mark official democratic politics. At this level an art exhibition can provide a space that differs from that of other public forums. The point of departure was the idea that the affects and desires that characterise populist politics are not necessarily separate from the ones that find expression in the sphere of art. Here, a key question was how forms of populism – whether left wing or right wing, progressive or reactionary – promote themselves and their quest for mass appeal through a stylistic and aesthetic consciousness. The political imagination of visual art can get involved in these economies of signs and desires, and address current cultural discussions through proposals for other directions for democracy.

Populism included new works and projects by around 40 international artists and artist groups, bringing together challenging works in a multitude of artistic strategies. The exhibitions took place in parallel at the following venues:

Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. Opening April 8 through June 5
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. Opening April 15 through September 4
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Opening April 29 through August 28
Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt a.M. Opening May 10 through September 4

Curators: Lars Bang Larsen, Cristina Ricupero, Nicolaus Schafhausen

Artists:Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Fatma Akinci, Petra Bauer, Bernadette Corporation, Marc Bijl, Jakob Boeskov, Martin Le Chevallier, Phil Collins, Minerva Cuevas, Jeremy Deller, Dias & Riedweg, Gardar Eide Einarsson & Matias Faldbakken, Esto TV, Anita Fricek, Jens Haaning & Superflex, Russell Haswell, Henry Vlll's Wives, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Susanne Jirkuff, Amar Kanwar, Per Kirkeby, Matthieu Laurette, Jani Leinonen, Erik van Lieshout, Mindaugas Lukosaitis, Annika Lundgren, Cildo Meireles, Jean-François Moriceau & Petra Mrzyk, Sarah Morris, Begoña Muñoz, Roman Ondak, Kirstine Roepstorff, Willem de Rooij, Julika Rudelius, Stig Sjölund with Ronny Hansson, Jonas Kjellgren and Birgitta Tholander, Otto Snoek, Sean Snyder, Temporary Services, Milica Tomic, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Wang Du, Tobias Zielony

Populism is developed through a network of artists, curators and theorists who are brought together to debate the themes related to populism and elaborate a discourse together:
Board of institutional advisors: Ina Blom from the Department of art History IAKK, University of Oslo, Leontine Coelewij from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Lolita Jablonskiene from the Contemporary Art Information Centre in Vilnius, Gavin Jantjes from The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Maaretta Jaukkuri from the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, and Vanessa Joan Müller, Frankfurter Kunstverein.

The Populism Reader

The Populism Reader is an anthology that comprises twenty texts on the various aspects of populism, written by political scientists, journalists, art historians and activists. Among the contributors are Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Brian Holmes, Ingo Niermann, Audrone Zukauskaite, Marius Babias, Ina Blom, Bart Lootsma, Niels Werber, Piotr Piotrowski, Lars-Erik Frank, Mads Ted Drud-Jensen and others. With illustrations by Atelier van Lieshout.

The Populism Catalogue

The Populism Catalogue includes documentation of the four exhibitions along with an anthology of short stories by Matias Faldbakken, Liam Gillick and other authors.

The foregoing texts and images are provided and copyrighted by: https://www.fkv.de/en/