Center for Uncertainty Studies Blog
Violence, Uncertainty and Empathy - Andreas Zick at Kunsthalle Bielefeld
© Adrian Strothotte, Universität Bielefeld.
by Adrian Strothotte
The exhibition "Taking a stand. Käthe Kollwitz, Mona Hatoum" brings together two artists - "one historical and one contemporary – whose art serves as a memorial against suffering and oppression and stands for greater humanity.“ (Kunsthalle Bielefeld)
The two fully booked tours through the exhibition, which can be seen at Kunsthalle Bielefeld until June 16, provided valuable impulses between art and science. On his way through the museum, Andreas Zick emphasizes the uncertainty that drives people today, but which is particularly addressed in the works of Kollwitz and Hatoum. The complexity in dealing with the collective phenomenon is illustrated by the conflict and violence researcher using works such as Hatoum's Remains of the Day, which shows an ensemble of burned seats with a table that was created for an exhibition in Hiroshima in 2017, or Kollwitz' works from the cycle "A Weavers' Revolt". The uneasy mood evoked here is part of Hatoum's program: The focus lies on social inequality, defiance and war. The two artists are linked by their experiences of violence - in the world war on the one hand and the Lebanese civil war on the other.
Andreas Zick draws connections between the drawings and installations and events of the recent past: New Year's Eve in Cologne, the situation in Gaza and the current, new isolation of Jews in Germany. His particular perspective also comes to the fore in various conceptual approaches. Martha C. Nussbaum's idea of political emotions or Julia Kristeva's concept of an abject between subject and object, whose state is beyond meaning and realized in the form of radical exclusion, meet the visual power of the exhibited artists.
The director of the IKG concludes his tour in front of a work by Hatoum that shows the destruction in Beirut in the 1970s (Bourj A, Bourj II, Bourj III (2011)). The tour closes with a view beyond the exhibits to the sunny Kunsthallenpark with the fairground rides of the Leineweber market - it is precisely this contrast which opens up new perspectives.