-K-i-n-g-d-o-m- of the Ill

-K-i-n-g-d-o-m- of the Ill is an international group exhibition curated by Sara Cluggish (Mary Hulings Rice Director, Perlman Teaching Museum, Carleton College) and Pavel S. Pyś (Curator, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center). Opening on September 30, 2022, the exhibition marks the second installment of TECHNO HUMANITIES, a long-term research project initiated by MUSEION Director Bart van der Heide. The exhibition is supported by a series of public programs and an anthology of newly commissioned critical texts published by Hatje Cantz.

Occupying the entirety of the museum, -K-i-n-g-d-o-m- of the Ill investigates the contemporary social, corporate, and institutional systems that influence our experience of healing and well-being. The exhibition seeks to respond to the current debate on health and illness, contamination and purity, and care and neglect by asking how and by whom a body is defined as healthy or sick.

The exhibition includes works by Enrico Boccioletti, Brothers Sick (Ezra and Noah Benus), Shu Lea Cheang, Heather Dewey-Hagborg & Phillip Andrew Lewis, Julia Frank, Sharona Franklin, Barbara Gamper, Nan Goldin, Johanna Hedva, Ingrid Hora, Adelita Husni-Bey, Ian Law, Carolyn Lazard, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Juliana Cerqueira Leite & Zoë Claire Miller, Mary Maggic, Mattia Marzorati, Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.), Erin M. Riley, P. Staff, and Lauryn Youden.

-K-i-n-g-d-o-m- of the Ill presents over 20 artists whose works draw on their lived experiences. Some of the artists identify as chronically ill or disabled and challenge the distinction between a healthy and an unhealthy body on a daily basis. The title of the exhibition references Susan Sontag’s work of critical theory Illness as Metaphor (1978). The strikethrough in the word “kingdom” in the exhibition’s title represents a resistance to Sontag’s binary demarcation between the two “kingdoms” of the healthy and the ill. The curators argue that health and illness are not two separate worlds but rather intertwined and co-existing.

The exhibition investigates the ways in which welfare systems and commercial incentives determine healthcare, and how we question common definitions of good health. In this time of pandemic, increasing social anxiety, rising healthcare costs, increased monitoring of medical information, and growing precarity among the creative class, can we still say we are truly healthy?

-K-i-n-g-d-o-m- of the Ill highlights flaws, inequities, and shortcomings in the public health system that have come to the surface during the COVID-19 pandemic and observes the ways in which support networks are imagined alongside alternative methods of well-being.

Curators Sara Cluggish and Pavel S. Pyś: “We began developing -K-i-n-g-d-o-m- of the Ill in 2019 and the exhibition has certainly been reshaped by the pandemic. It has brought all matters of health and illness into sharp relief. The COVID-19 outbreak has not only informed ongoing debates on the national, financial, political, and ideological dimensions of healthcare provisions, but also shaped our personal experiences of how we receive and provide care, guard personal space through social distancing, and decide whether or not to share physical space with others. For many who identify as ill, this mode of navigating the world and our healthcare systems is nothing new and has been, to varying degrees, their experience of life prior to the pandemic.”

The exhibition also engages with health-related topics especially relevant to South Tyrol, including discourses around mental health and the emphasis on holistic or alternative modes of care, as well as far-reaching innovations in preventive health-care. These questions are addressed by João Florêncio, Shu Lea Cheng, Zander Porter, Marina Orlova, Barbara Plagg, Simone Frangi, Mary Maggic, Enrico Floriddia, Silvia Casini, Martina Drechsel, and Casa Basaglia/Meran.

An anthology of critical texts, the second in the TECHNO HUMANITIES publication series, will be published by Hatje Cantz to amplify the discourses surrounding the exhibition’s topics. The book includes texts by Bart van der Heide, Sara Cluggish, Pavel S. Pyś, Lioba Hirsch, Amy Berkowitz, Artur Olesch, Mary Maggic, P. Staff, and Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Press
Send/Receive, Berlin
Anne Maier, anne@sendreceive.eu / T +49 170 2907585