Ana Mendieta
Traces
March 29–July 6, 2014
In Dialogue: Viennese Actionism
March 15–July 6, 2014
Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Moenchsberg 32
5020 Salzburg
Austria
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm,
Wednesday 10am–8pm
Ana Mendieta: Traces
Ana Mendieta is among the most important and influential artists of our era. She was born in 1948 in Cuba, and was sent by her parents at the age of twelve, together with her sister, to be raised in the United States. She died in New York in 1985, at the age of thirty-six. Her pioneering work has been acknowledged by large retrospectives in the United States and Europe, and is represented in the collections of major museums. Long overdue in the German-speaking area, especially in Austria, are a comprehensive exhibition and German monograph on Ana Mendieta. The exhibition at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg presents a comprehensive overview, with roughly 150 central works in diverse media ranging from photography, film, and sculpture through to drawing. A large section of the show will present the artist’s archive: slides and photographs, notebooks and postcards will be specially prepared for the exhibition.
Curators: Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator of the Hayward Gallery, and Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, with Tina Teufel, Curator, Museum der Moderne Salzburg
In Dialogue: Viennese Actionism
For the first time, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg is devoting a special exhibition to artists and works from the collection associated with so-called Viennese Actionism: Günter Brus, Adolf Frohner, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, and also Anestis Logothetis. In addition, one space will exhibit works by women artists who introduce an entirely different concept of the body and a new image of women, while connecting it with a media critique: Renate Bertlmann, VALIE EXPORT, and Friederike Pezold. This special focus on the Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s collection provides access to astonishing holdings; impressive in range and with hitherto rarely shown material. Thus its diversity makes us reading a history of the representation of body-based art and its various articulations in the museum context during the past decades.
This exhibition will take place parallel to the retrospective of Ana Mendieta and in dialogue with her work. During her studies with Hans Breder at the Intermedia Program of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, USA, which Breder ran from 1968 for more than three decades, Mendieta came into contact with the work of artists such as Vito Acconci, Mary Beth Edelson, Hans Haacke, Allan Kaprow, and Robert Wilson, but also with the Viennese Actionists. Clear resonances are evident in Mendieta’s performances and artistic practice. A few of the connections that we are able to recognize today are—to name a few—the radical use of the body as artistic means, the precise selection of photographs assigned the task of mediating performance-based works in the gallery context, and the experimental use of concepts and disciplines.
Curators: Sabine Breitwieser, Director, with Barbara Herzog, Assistant Curator, Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Symposium on the exhibitions
Saturday, March 29, 2:30–7:30pm
On the occasion of these two exhibitions—Ana Mendieta. Traces and In Dialogue: Viennese Actionism—the Museum der Moderne Salzburg is organizing a symposium in which the exhibited artists and works will be examined as prime case studies of body- and performance-based art, along with their implementation in art institutions. A few of the connections that we are able to recognize today are the—in part radical—confrontations with the body as an artistic means, deliberate selection of photographs that are assigned the task of mediating a performative work in the gallery context, as well as the experimental treatment of concepts and disciplines.
Topics and speakers:
Welcome and introduction
Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg
“Working outside the box”
Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery, London
“Embers”
Adrian Heathfield, Professor of Performance and Visual Culture, University of Roehampton, London
“Collecting and exhibiting Viennese Actionism”
Eva Badura-Triska, Curator, mumok, museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig wien, Vienna
“The life of performance-based and ephemeral art in the museum”
Panel discussion with Eva Badura-Triska, Adrian Heathfield, and Stephanie Rosenthal
*Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints), 1972. Suite of six colour photographs, estate prints, 65 x 48 x 2.3 cm. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, L.L.C. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York and Paris and Alison Jacques Gallery, London.
