What Makes Another World Possible? A new exhibition looks at how art shapes our societies
Image: Tanja Ostojić; Dagmara Bilon performing Misplaced Women? in the Olympic Park, London, in frame of Tanja Ostojić´s workshop (December, 2016). Fragment from Misplaced Women? by Tanja Ostojić (2009–ongoing). Documented by Aleksandar Utjesinovic
12 October 2021
Text:
Paula Erizanu
A Tallinn exhibition is looking at how artists have changed the world’s political make-up with a special show on socially-engaged, European art from the past 10 years.
Bringing together work from 14 artists and groups, the show is an adaptation of curator Corina L. Apostol’s 2019 book, Making Another World Possible.
The pieces dig into topics like surveillance, entrenched economic inequalities, anti-racism, creative education, queerness, and political expression.
“The global pandemic has only amplified many of these urgent issues, and interest in socially engaged art has grown: it has moved from the margins of the art world to being a central part of the discussion on contemporary art and politics,” says the curator.
Highlights include Tanja Ostojić’s Misplaced Women?, looking at migration and women’s rights. To create the performance and collage series, Ostojić invited women to carry packed suitcases in public spaces in front of train stations, airports, borders crossings, police stations, and refugee camps.
Timelines, too, are a recurring theme of the show, with artists such as Romania’s Lia Perjovschi rewriting history according to their own experience, or dismantling the Western canon, as Russian art group Chto Delat? did by introducing the audience to socially engaged art in the Baltic region.
Learn more here.
Image: Tanja Ostojić; Dagmara Bilon performing Misplaced Women? at Bergen International Airport, Norway (2011). Fragment from Misplaced Women? by Tanja Ostojić (2009–ongoing). Documented by Jannicke Olsen
Image: Dan Perjovchi, Fragment of his activist site-specific drawings
Image: Alina Bliumis, Dance as a Weapon (Studies in Movement Across National Ideologies of War and Resistance), series of watercolor on paper, 2020
Image: Lia Perjovschi, Fragment from 2020. Key Words (installation, 2020). Courtesy of Ivan Gallery.
Image: Chto Delat?, One Night in a Social Network: An Opera-Farce (HD video, 29’56’’, 2020)
Read more
