OnView—Transformation

OnView is a curated film series by PalaisPopulaire. Each spring and fall, the institution presents films by international artists that explore a specific theme over a period of up to eight weeks. Under the title Transformation, the fourth edition brings together works by Lida Abdul, Vajiko Chachkhiani, VALIE EXPORT, Selma Selman, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Gernot Wieland.

For OnView—Transformation, works were selected that reflect different meanings and interpretations of “transformation.” Set within social and political contexts, the films explore transience, the desire for change and transformation, as well as stagnation and inertia.

Still Life (2001) by British artist and director Sam Taylor-Johnson uses time-lapse footage to show a bowl of fruit slowly decaying and becoming overgrown with mold. The work references Dutch and Spanish vanitas still lifes of the seventeenth century and translates this tradition of painting into a contemporary context. Everything is in a constant state of change: from life to decay, from beauty to decomposition.

In White House (2005), Lida Abdul explores what it means to “whitewash” history—in this case, the consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Although the film’s rhythm initially suggests hope and progress, Abdul uses the act of painting over to point to the impossibility of recovering what has been lost.

In 2016, Selma Selman conceived her deeply personal performance You Have No Idea. The version presented here, documented in 2020, shows the artist walking toward the White House on the day of the U.S. presidential election. The loud repetition of the words “You have no idea,” intensified to the point of exhaustion, becomes an act of resistance against the racist and sexist stereotypes directed at her as a woman and a Romani woman. The work moves between anger and despair, resistance and self-protection. It presents empathy as a political force while simultaneously questioning the limits of its effectiveness in bringing about social change.

Winter Which Was Not There (2017) by Vajiko Chachkhiani traces the disentanglement of individual and collective history. The Georgian artist observes a man watching the recovery of a monumental heroic sculpture from the sea. The observer’s reflection reveals, in a disquieting way, how historical and political circumstances become inscribed in our perception.

In Ink in Milk (2018), Gernot Wieland constructs a multilayered narrative about memory, exclusion, and the transmission of trauma across generations. Narrated in the first person and in English with a distinctly Austrian inflection, the artist tells the story of a school friend who attempts to break free from the confines of his reality through disguises and the fantasy of a life elsewhere—a search that ends in psychiatric hospitalization. Between the possibility of individual freedom and the pressure of collective conformity, the work invites us to find our own paths out of what appears to be a universal sense of hopelessness.

On February 28, 1971, Austrian broadcaster ORF aired Facing a Family as part of its evening programming, provoking strong and unsettled reactions among viewers. In this film, Austrian conceptual artist VALIE EXPORT depicts a family bathed in the light of a television set, staring back impassively. In doing so, she draws attention to the act of watching while simultaneously highlighting the speechlessness television produces.

Curated by Sara Bernshausen, Deputy Director, PalaisPopulaire.