Politics of Art

To celebrate the 10 years of operation of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens a large scale exhibition titled Politics of Art is being organized from October 13, 2010 until January 30, 2011.

The exhibition will present approximately 100 works (installations, drawings, photographs, video installations, net art works, etc., many of which are exhibited for the first time), by 38 artists coming from international centres and emerging regions, including: Bill Viola, Kendell Geers, Andrea Bowers, Kӧken Ergun, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Theodoros, Yael Kanarek, Carlos Motta, Shirin Neshat, [+RAM TV], George Osodi, Walid Ra’ad & The Atlas Group, Oliver Ressler, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Danae Stratou, Stefanos Tsivopoulos Yiorgos Harvalias, Andreas Angelidakis, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, xurban_collective, etc.

The exhibition begins by a dominant nowadays museum principle under which we are asked to manage the collection as a constantly changing field of new relationships among works, revealing new narratives and meanings but also a wider understanding of the contemporary, international and intercultural. In this framework, past and present are being restructured one within the other, and the contemporary art practice is understood in dialectical relation to the totality of global culture that transcends national, geographic or racial limitations.

The exhibition aims to explore through different perspectives on the works which directly or suggestively indicate political, economic and social phenomena and events, the political dynamics of contemporary art, its possibility to act as a lever of criticism and alternative political thought and action. Political uses of the public space, situations and experiences of oppression, discrimination and violent political and social conflicts, economic globalization and the politics of space in their ecological and social dimensions, reconstituation of collective memory and the restoration of a collective social space, are some of the issues that works in the exhibition will explore, looking for alternative political collective action and artistic activism, as well as a new interactive relationship between the artist and the community, local and global.

Politics of Art
Kurator: Anna Kafetsi

Künstler: Bill Viola, Kendell Geers, Andrea Bowers, Köken Ergun, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Theodoros , Yael Kanarek, Carlos Motta, Shirin Neshat, [+RAM TV] , George Osodi, Walid Ra´ad & The Atlas Group , Oliver Ressler, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Danae Stratou, Stefanos Tsivopoulos Yiorgos Harvalias, Andreas Angelidakis, Young-Hae Chang HEAVY INDUSTRIES , xurban.net  ...