Following institutions are opening on the same evening from 6 pm onwards: GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst und Zentrum für Künstlerpublikationen.

Our relation to images is conditioned by the various pictorial conventions of Western culture. Nadira Husain (born 1980 in Paris, lives and works in Paris and Berlin) addresses them in her work, albeit decidedly not from a traditional Western male perspective. Her generally figurative pictures display the influence of both Indian miniatures and the feminist theoretical apparatus. This atypical combination results on the one hand from an exploration of her own Indian roots as well as from her reflection about current social and political structures on the other.

In her first institutional solo exhibition titled BEUGEN STRECKEN [BEND STRETCH], the artist dismantles the classical articulation between frame and painting, motif and background. Picture and frame are accordingly no longer directly connected, visual elements are fragmented, ornament and main figure taken apart. The pattern’s proliferation and dissemination through the exhibition space dissolve the usual connections between wall, frame and image with the intent to reassemble these components within a different dynamic.It is not the artwork but rather the space that is treated like a compositional unit, inviting the visitor to move about with the purpose of being able to perceive its entirety.

Husain’s experiments with painting, drawing and print techniques are related with previous attempts to express subjectivities existing outside the Western male canon. In this sense the artist tries to eliminate the classical hierarchical structures at works in pictures—including the historical primacy of subject over decoration. Nadira Husain’s formal research re ects certain tension elds within today’s society that are emerging amid a desire to emancipate from traditions and the yearning for them.

Curated by Fanny Gonella

PROGRAM

6 July 2014, 3 pm Workshop with Nadira Husain

24 July 2014, 7 pm Guided tour of the exhibition with Anna Moldenhauer

24 August 2014, 12 am Curator’s tour of the exhibition with Fanny Gonella

14 September 2014, 7 pm Talk with Tanja Malycheva (Volontärin, Museen Böttcherstraße) and Mona Schieren (Art historian, Hochschule für Künste Bremen)

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