Hanover 30159
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Wednesday and Friday–Sunday 11am–6pm
Thursday 11am–8pm
T +49 511 701200
kestner@kestnergesellschaft.de
April 18–August 8, 2021
Camille Henrot
Mother Tongue
The exhibition Mother Tongue by the French artist Camille Henrot (*1978 in Paris) revolves around existential emotions. The works in the exhibition reflect being drawn between the desire to retreat and the desire to engage—on both a personal and political level. Henrot’s works navigate through a present caught between rational systems and intuitive knowledge. Kestner Gesellschaft is pleased to present the artist’s first wide-ranging institutional solo exhibition of new works in drawing, painting and sculpture in Germany, accompanied by the large-scale fresco series Monday, and film installation Saturday. Henrot was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2013 for her groundbreaking piece Grosse Fatigue, as well as the Carte Blanche at Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2017, resulting in her monumental exhibition Days are Dogs.
Susan Hiller
Lost and Found
Lost and Found by the American artist Susan Hiller (1940–2019) is an audio collage of voices that recite anecdotes, songs, and memories in 23 different languages. The languages are extinct or nearly extinct, including Aramaic and Livonian. The recorded voices are accompanied by subtitles and an oscillating line that visualizes the sound waves. Viewers thus gain access to the different worlds of the speakers and are connected to them across time and space, through the physical experience of sound. In her works, Susan Hiller combines an archaeological approach with an interest in the collective subconscious and in a cultural memory that is expressed not least through language.
Sharon Lockhart
The Future Should Always Be Better, at Kestner_Facade
The American artist Sharon Lockhart (*1964, Norwood, Massachusetts) will present a glowing neon sign that reads “The Future Should Always Be Better” on the facade of the Kestner Gesellschaft thus expressing the feelings of hope and resilience, so crucial in the challenging COVID19 times. Sharon Lockhart deals with social issues and the construction of communities in her conceptual works that encompass the photography and film. With this installation for the Kestner Gesellschaft, the artist is turning to a new medium for the first time: neon lettering.
Moyra Davey
My Saints, at Kestner_Project_Space
Moyra Davey’s (*1958 in Toronto, Canada) films consist of loosely connected, moving images and contain personal narratives that resemble internal monologues. By relating her own experiences to those of well-known artists, writers, and philosophers, Davey’s films are also reflections on the nature of existence, thought, and the human condition.
Diamanda Galás
Broken Gargoyles / Opening Performance, at Kestner_Nicolai_Chapel
Broken Gargoyles is a sound installation by the singer, composer and pianist Diamanda Galás (*1955, San Diego, California), composed in 2020 during the onset of the COVID19 pandemic, in a collaboration with the artist and sound designer Daniel Neumann. Based on two poems by German poet Georg Heym—Das Fieberspital and Die Dämonen der Stadt—which he wrote in 1911, the sound work is composed of natural as well as heavily processed voices, manipulated piano and other various sound sources.
September 11–December 26, 2021
Nicolas Party
Stage Fright
The artist Nicolas Party (*1980 in Lausanne, Switzerland) has created a work that examines painting and its history down to the smallest detail. It is not only the basic elements of painting that interest the Party, but also their reception. The artist extends his painting across the entire exhibition space, and beyond: canvases are painted along with the walls, ceilings, and the building’s exterior walls. Party thus offers a striking demonstration of the significance that the surroundings as well as the architectural and institutional context have for viewing pictures. In his portraits and landscape paintings, the focus is not on the exact image, but on transformation through material, color, and composition. The result is fairytale-like, surreal imagery between the poles of representation and abstraction, observation and imagination.
Ericka Beckman
Fair Game
A world governed by structures and systems in which performance and optimization are constant concerns, and gamification is used as a means to increase participation: Long before social media and virtual interaction, the video pioneer Ericka Beckman (*1951 in New York) explored these themes in her films beginning in the early 1980s. The exhibition presents two films by Ericka Beckman: her first 16mm film You the Better from 1983 and her latest film We Are Labor (2020), which will be shown for the first time in Germany.
Tim Etchells
Let it come, let it come. The time we can love, at Kestner_Facade
Tim Etchells (*1962, Stevenage, UK) is an English playwright, performer, director, writer, and light artist. In recent years, Etchells has developed numerous works using neon and LED text sculptures that have been shown in public places around the world. His new neon installation for Kestner Gesellschaft Facade quotes two lines from the English translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s influential 1873 poem Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell). Installing the work on the exterior of Kestner Gesellschaft, Etchells positions its intimate invocation as a bold public imperative or demand, calling for a future world that can be loved as well as of a future, long dreamed of, in which love may finally be possible.
Marcello Maloberti
Circus / Opening Performance, at Kestner_Nicolai_Chapel
Circus by Marcello Maloberti (*1966, Codogno, Italy) is an itinerant work made up of elements that allude to spontaneous forms of aggregation in public spaces. Each element chosen by the artist becomes an important piece of the little amusement park, where “architectures and people” converge without establishing new hierarchies. Circus represents a new center “linked to the city, its changes are influenced by life and time.”
