Participation - Without you there is no art

In this year’s first exhibition at Trondheim kunstmuseum, you are invited to participate!

The role of the visitor at an art museum is traditionally a relatively passive one; a spectator looking at artworks with a certain distance. The exhibition Participation embodies a desire and an intention to lower the threshold for a wider audience to experience contemporary art. All the works featured in the exhibition rely on audience participation. The works invite the spectators to take part and get involved, physically and practically, with an aim of encouraging reflection. The participation aspect of the exhibition is twofold: some of the artworks invite introspection and involvment on an emotional level. Others demand the spectator to complete the artwork by getting involved, physically or otherwise.

Through Yoko Ono's iconic piece Wish Tree, we can participate in a worldwide art project. On white pieces of paper we can write our wishes and attach them to the tree standing in the exhibition. Toghether with all the wishes of other visitors the branches of the tree will eventually be filled. After the exhibition, the wishes are collected and sent to the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, where they are stored together with wishes from all over the world.

In Erwin Wurm's humorous One Minute Sculptures we are not only expected to interact with the work, but to become the work itself through participation. By following instructions and by using various props, the audience turns into sculptures. Wurm's works have garnered a lot of attention since the 1990s. Later this year Wurm's works will be shown in the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Without you there is no art!