Not A Single Story II

Artists: Latifa Echakhch, Peter Geschwind & Gunilla Klingberg, Lungiswa Gqunta, Lubaina Himid, Marcia Kure, Santiago Mostyn och Anike Joyce Sadiq

The Wanås Foundation is pleased to present the opening of Not a Single Story II at Wanås Konst sculpture park and Art Gallery on May 5, 2019. In this international group exhibition, artworks influenced by place, history, identity, combine the grandiose and mundane. The story as a concept as well as the participating artists’ practices and how they relate to the site comprise the central elements. In addition, throughout the month of July, visitors will encounter the choreographic installation Fluid Grounds by Benoît Lachambre as part of the live art program. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s well-known TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story is the starting point for the exhibition and the inspiration for the title, Not A Single Story.

“I’m a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call ‘the danger of the single story.’”

Adichie argues:

“Stories matter. How they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.”

For many of the participating artists, history, identity and transformation form a recurring theme, and a political interest is inevitable. Confronting conflicts in everyday situations and interweaving them with poetic and emotional states are part of their artistic expression. Lubaina Himid, who received the prestigious Turner Prize in 2017, describes her work:

“I need to do it because there are stories that need to be told, there are stories that aren’t being told, there are gaps in history that are not being filled and there are gaps in education that aren’t being served by the system we live in…”

The works engage a wide variety of artistic practices—shadows and news footage become moving images, a drape of bottles and ropes of bed linens block our path, tarpaulin and fabric become soft sculptures. In a new work, Latifa Echakhch uses crushed bricks; the material shifts from being a building material to coloring the ground. Echakhch has commented on destruction in her works as representing opportunity: build up, rub out, begin again, leave and forget, leave and lift up, re-do—reflect. Like the other artists in Not A Single Story II, Echakhch complicates the narrative; they add invisible stories, take away and present choices before us.

Not A Single Story II is a further development of the large exhibition that Wanås Konst’s leadership duo co-curated at the Nirox Foundation sculpture park outside Johannesburg in 2018. With a concentrated selection of artists and some new names, the exhibition is transformed in a new place. 

Performance program announced – Fluid Grounds with Benoît Lachambre
Fluid Grounds is produced by Par B.L.eux and Sophie Corriveau and is the second part of a triptych that began with Lifeguard (a solo created by Benoît Lachambre in 2016). Installed in the Art Gallery, it slowly unfolds as three performers sketch a multicolored, theatrical cartography with tape. Fluid Grounds is influenced by the performers who create it and the visitors who pass through it. Since 2014, Wanås Konst has worked with live art through a commitment to contemporary dance and choreography. The program is created with Rachel Tess, Associate Curator of Dance.

Press contact: Sofia Bertilsson, sofia [​at​] wanaskonst.se, T +46 733 866820

The Sculpture Park and the Collection
The Wanås Foundation – a Center for Art and Education produces site-specific, contemporary international art and education with an emphasis on innovation and accessibility. Wanås is a place in the world where art, nature, and history meet. Wanås is located in southern Sweden 1.5 h from Malmö/Copenhagen. The collection in the Sculpture Park hosts almost 70 permanent works—specially created for the site by artists such as Igshaan Adams, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono and Martin Puryear. Wanås Konst is run by the Wanås Foundation. Marika Wachtmeister initiated the exhibitions in 1987. Since 2011, the Foundation is led by Co-Directors Elisabeth Millqvist, and Mattias Givell.