In the last twenty years the migration phenomenon has been massively touched upon, in form and content, by various artists on the international scene. The theme of the artist-migrant, indeed, is a little-debated topic, but it is always present in history, often a fundamental element for cultural hybridisation and the creation of new aesthetic trends.
Exhibition view “Looking Elsewhere Being There”, CerModern Arts Center, Ankara / Türkiye, 2024
On these assumptions, it is clear how topical is the exhibition “Looking Elsewhere Being There” promoted by the Italian Embassy and the Austrian Embassy in Turkey, supported by the Ministry of European and International Affairs and the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of the Federal Republic of Austria, curated by Marcello Farabegoli and co-curated by Charlotte Aurich and Pablo Chiereghin. The exhibition, scheduled to run from 25 September to 3 November 2024, is held in a context suggestively suited to the proposal, the CerModern Arts Center in Ankara, a recently established (April 2010) research Centre for contemporary arts, also a museum created by redeveloping a disused railway depot, where the train remains a symbol of post-industrial progress and a memorable means of the first mass migrations.
Exhibition view “Looking Elsewhere Being There”, CerModern Arts Center, Ankara / Türkiye, 2024
The concept of the exhibition, based on the idea of a desired and ever-present (meaning both temporal and auspicious) ‘elsewhere’, eliminates boundaries and suggests a collective with no apparent homeland, where each artist stages a personal and often biographical interpretation, considering that many members belong to the so-called ‘Erasmus Generation’, thus they themselves are cultural nomads in their training: long before today’s organised art residencies, people practising art have always looked ‘elsewhere’ for stimuli and operational feedback to promote their work and to experience the novelties of the great cultural epicentres, both European capitals and places favourable to the dissemination of aesthetic phenomena (think of the role of Scandinavian countries in relation to contemporary photography).
Exhibition view “Looking Elsewhere Being There”, CerModern Arts Center, Ankara / Türkiye, 2024
The interchanges between Italy and Austria, in particular, are the systems investigated and promoted by the respective embassies on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Looking Elsewhere Being There’, with the hope of increasing interest in the contemporary art sector. The artists connected with the Austrian capital, whether resident or passing through, were asked by curator Farabegoli, the artistic director and project chief of the exhibition, essentially a ‘travel’ work that could fit into a suitcase: this indication resulted in a good multimedia proposal, including photographic works, modular installations, videos, small sculptures and striking paintings, with the artists working individually and yet competing in a successful aesthetic dialectic.
Exhibition view “Looking Elsewhere Being There”, CerModern Arts Center, Ankara / Türkiye, 2024
It is precisely this combination of simultaneous research connected by the curatorial team that is the most valuable aspect of the exhibition at CerModern, because it cancels distances for a common goal, where authorial individuality is blurred in favour of a shared aesthetic: together with artists of Turkish, German, Italian and Austrian origin, Guest Artists Eva Schlegel and Erwin Wurm, the putative ‘godfathers’ of this extra-territorial initiative, are perfectly amalgamated. Also, worth mentioning is the presence of Linus Riepler, the young promise of contemporary Austrian art in circulation.
Exhibition view “Looking Elsewhere Being There”, CerModern Arts Center, Ankara / Türkiye, 2024
As this is an exhibition organised in cooperation with the Italian Embassy, it is natural that Italian artists are present: Vienna and its surroundings register many of them, such as Antonella Anselmo, Chiara Campanile, Ilaria Carli Paris, Casaluce-Geiger, Pablo Chiereghin, Tom Eller, Luca Faccio, Karin Ferrari, Cristina Fiorenza, Julia Frank, Gianmaria Gava, Michela Ghisetti, Siggi Hofer, Brigitte Mahlknecht, Klaus Pobitzer (a.k.a. Felix Grütsch), Lucia Riccelli, Gabriele Rothemann (Italian and German citizen), Ryts Monet, Franziska Schink, Esther Stocker, Alberto Storari and Federico Vecchi, many of them from South Tyrol, a hybrid territory between Italy and Vienna.
Exhibition view “Looking Elsewhere Being There”, CerModern Arts Center, Ankara / Türkiye, 2024
There is also a small selection of artists who live in Italy but are linked to Vienna for various reasons, such as Flavia Bigi, Cristina Calderoni, Chiara Giorgetti and Luca Sposato. Finally, there are also some renowned Turkish artists living in Vienna as well as in Berlin and Ankara, such as Başak Altın, Songül Boyraz, Pınar Öğrenci and Nazim Ünal Yilmaz, thus uniting the three countries involved. A Pop Romanticism formally binds it all together, with a good eye for the space’s distribution and time’s fruition.
Info:
VV. AA. Looking Elsewhere Being There
25/09 – 3/11/2024
Cermodern Arts Center
Anafartalar, Altınsoy Cd. No:3, 06101 Sıhhıye / Altındağ/Altındağ/Ankara, Turchia
www.cermodern.org
Actor and performer, he loves visual arts in all their manifestations.
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