The Moderna Exhibition 2014 – Society Acts
20 September 2014–25 January 2015
Moderna Museet Malmö
Ola Billgrens plats 2-4
Malmö
Sweden
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11 am–6 pm
Curator: Andreas Nilsson
Co-curator: Maija Rudovska
Assistant curator: Julia Björnberg
Every four years, the Moderna Exhibition presents an inventory of Swedish contemporary art. Previously held twice at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, this year’s exhibition will differ in two ways geographically. First, the exhibition moves to Malmö, secondly, the focus is not only on Swedish but contemporary art from six other Baltic countries; Finland, Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In total, 38 artists and artist groups will participate in the Moderna Exhibition, which is subtitled Society Acts.
The title refers both to “acts” as in actions and to the verb to act. Several of the featured artists and works discuss or engage in performative practices where the distance between viewing and interacting is essential, and where issues of private and collective identities, political expressions and personal reflections are materialised. Language and migration, the boundary between private and public, and between fact and fiction, are other subjects that occur frequently in the exhibition.
The Moderna Exhibition 2014 – Society Acts will fill the entire Moderna Museet Malmö building and spaces beyond the Museum. Lea Porsager (DK), for instance, lets her recent work The Golden Insider – 81 Inflated Facets spread across the square outside of the museum, and Johanna Gustafsson Fürst (SE) will show her site-specific work White Pillars at Möllevångstorget, in a commentary on the social structure and the boundary between the public and private domain.
“In this exhibition the big social questions are juxtaposed with personal reflections and historical comments. We will see several examples of artists who discuss outlooks in both the public sphere and within the confines of the exhibition space. The artists move between concrete political themes and activism and more abstract, philosophical approaches to society and the contemporary era,” says Andreas Nilsson, curator of the Moderna Exhibition.
Several of the works were created specifically for this exhibition. As a historical backdrop, we will also show older works by artists such as Tadeusz Kantor and Björn Lövin from the Moderna Museet collection, to emphasise the complexity of the exhibition. In the same way that society interacts on the basis of historic experiences and contemporary demands, the artists in the exhibition operate between their own experiences and hopes.
Participating artists:
AaBbPp, Patrik Aarnivaara, Emanuel Almborg, Cezary Bodzianowski, Maja Borg, Eglė Budvytytė & Bart Groenendaal, Zenta Dzividzinska, Ugnius Gelguda & Neringa Černiauskaitė, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Joachim Hamou, Maj Hasager, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Laura Kaminskaitė, Tadeusz Kantor, Essi Kausalainen, Agnieszka Kurant, Anna Lundh, Henning Lundkvist, Maija Luutonen, Björn Lövin, J.O. Mallander, Jonas Mekas, Miks Mitrēvics & Kristīne Kursiša, Kristina Norman, Michala Paludan, Lea Porsager, Emily Roysdon, Imri Sandström, Algirdas Šeškus, Janek Simon, Ola Ståhl & Terje Östling, Mika Taanila, Anna-Stina Treumund & Marju Mutsu, Ola Vasiljeva, Visible Solutions LLC, Tris Vonna-Michell, Mette Winckelmann
With support from: E.ON
With contributions from:
Skåne Regional Council
Polish Institute in Stockholm
The Danish Arts Foundation
The Latvian Culture Capital Fund
The International Cultural Programme Centre, The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania & the Lithuanian Council for Culture
Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia
Cultural Endowment of Estonia
The catalogue is sponsored by:
Letterstedska Föreningen
