• Fri 02 07 2021 / 2 – 9 pm •
Hands

with CEVDET EREK, ALI EYAL, SHILPA GUPTA, TAUS MAKHACHEVA, DHALI AL MAMOON, NICOLÁS PARIS, CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE, •• PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT, EVARISTE RICHER, YAZAN ROUSAN, KERSTIN SCHROEDINGER, ANTJE VAN WICHELEN + MAXIME GIDS, ALA YOUNIS
curated by MADHUSREE DUTTA, ALA YOUNIS

The exhibition HANDS is an effort to bring tactile sensations, playfulness and interaction back to public life – in the midst of a pandemic in which touch and hands are in and of themselves stigmatized as sources of contamination. The challenge for artists in this moment is to create accessible artistic practices, to anchor artworks in everyday realities and to fully utilize their playful and therapeutic potential. Touch Again! Live with Art! Let’s Play! represent the parameters that define the rules of play for these artworks. The artists in the exhibition have created objects that inspire tactility and interaction (Touch Again!), that are reproducible and thus more accessible (Live with Art!) and as playful as they are therapeutic (Let’s Play!).

Nine artists – Cevdet Erek, Ali Eyal, Shilpa Gupta, Taus Makhacheva, Dhali Al Mamoon,•• PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT, Evariste Richer, Yazan Rousan and Antje Van Wichelen with Maxime Gids – are invited to each create an artwork according to these specifications. As part of the art campaign the artists also have made multiples of each object – sometimes identical to the exhibits or in sizes smaller than the mother objects, sometimes as fractions or as an essence of the exhibit. They are available for a standard affordable price, independent of production costs and name recognition of the artist. The goal is to demystify art, to detach it from gallery and marketing strategies and to transfer it from institutional spaces to private and public ones.

With Charlotte Posenenske, the exhibition pays tribute to an artist who espoused accessible and interactive art practices and who was creating works as early as 1967 that were reproducible and affordable, collaborative and tactile, unlimited and unsigned, not to mention playful and ephemeral. Alongside this homage, Ala Younis’s video installation Hands: dismemberance also stands for the programmatic focus of the exhibition and can be seen as a prologue for the whole project HANDS. In this work Younis addresses the constraints, deformations and the dismemberment of hands. The artwork was created in collaboration with poet Iman Mersal. In addition, there will be the workshops Tactile Sensibility with Kerstin Schroedinger and A Small World or a Place In-Between Us with Nicolás Paris; traces of the workshops will also be seen in the exhibition.

Dates: Fri 02 07 2021 | 14:00–21:00
Venue: Academyspace, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne
Free admission

We look forward to welcoming you soon as a visitor to the exhibition HANDS. Please note that, for your, our and other visitors' security, the compliance with the general rules of hygiene and in perticular the use of a mask covering mouth and nose are mandatory during a visit. If you have any questions, please contact us at +49 (0)221 337748 92. Hygiene measures as PDF