Long Gone, Still Here—Sound as Medium / Lena Henke: Good Year

Exhibition projects at the Marta Herford Museum.

November 5, 2023–February 25, 2024
With Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Jeremy Deller, Gina Folly, Hiwa K, Mikhail Karikis, Hassan Khan, Christine Sun Kim, Michaela Melián, Olaf Nicolai, Lydia Ourahmane, Susan Philipsz, Adrian Piper, Aviva Silverman, Liza Sylvestre, Sung Tieu, Hannah Weinberger

This international group exhibition Long Gone Still Here—Sound as Medium is part of the programmatic reorientation of the Museum Marta Herford under director Kathleen Rahn to position it as a future site of synesthetic experience.

The exhibition is concerned with sounds, tones, and noises and explores the question of how everyday experience is marked by hearing. It focuses on multisensory and time-based works that do not primarily reproduce or represent but are rather experienced auditorily and physically. The invited artists use the potential of sound as a vehicle to convey something physically absent or temporally or spatially removed in a form that oscillates between presence and ephemerality—comparable to the “Madeleine effect” described by Marcel Proust. The sound-based works presented in the exhibition produce mental images, arouse memories, and influence spatial and temporal perception. Several artists also thematize the physical dimension of the supposedly immaterial medium of sound. They react directly to the building designed by Frank Gehry, deliberately employ sound waves, and use the building as a resonance chamber. This makes it possible to experience how architecture helps shape the auditory impression and how sounds, tones, and noises are perceived not only auditorily but also physically and can even have psychological and emotional effects. Music and song also play a central role in this context because they convey a sense of community and can help create identity.

The exhibition also thematizes how Deaf and hard of hearing people experience everyday life in a majority society of hearing people. It becomes clear how much hearing is taken for granted in our everyday life.

In the central Domgalerie (420 square meters), several sound works are arranged into a spatial and temporal score: one after another they activate different areas of the room and produce complex sound experiences. The sequence of all the pieces lasts just under an hour and a half—the room is otherwise empty, with just carpeting and seating furniture, so that visitors can linger comfortably.

This group exhibition presents twenty-eight works from 1968 to the present by sixteen international contemporary artists and duos of different generations. Jeremy Deller, Aviva Silverman, Ghislaine Leung, and Michaela Melián have created new site-specific productions for the exhibition.

As part of the exhibition there will be several cooperative events with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, and the tenth anniversary of the joint format Marta philharmonisch will be celebrated.

The exhibition has been realized with the kind support of T+A elektroakustik, JAB ANSTOETZ Group, and COR Sitzmöbel.

September 2, 2023–January 7, 2024
On the occasion of the fifth Marta Award by the Wemhöner Foundation, the Marta Herford presents Lena Henke’s solo exhibition Good Year. In an installation conceived specifically for the Lippold Gallery, the artist involves themes associated with Herford such as kitchen design and employs unusual olfactory impressions. The sculptor, who grew up locally and refers in her work to phenomena from art and social history, has transformed the museum’s spaces into a setting whose powerful sculptural gestures subtly but critically questions gender roles.

The Marta Award is special in that prizewinners contribute a work of art made especially for the museum’s own collection: Lena Henke developed a scent work titled Marta L. Henke (2023). When an enameled pot placed in front of the entrance to the exhibition is opened, visitors can experience this scent physically. Marta L. Henke (2023) is the first artwork of this kind in the Marta Collection. Inspired by the scents of her Westphalian homeland, the fragrance is a synesthetic experience. In an era of a flood of images in the media and of movement in digital spaces, the scent is a conscious statement for the physical, real experience of space.

Lena Henke’s work is marked by a questioning of her sociocultural surroundings. She studies power structures and hierarchies and makes interventions into unfamiliar conventions. She develops many of her installations in situ and relates to the existing qualities of a space as well as to its interpretation and formation. Her work is also characterized by a strong awareness of art history and sculptural traditions. She often deliberately borrows from existing works, appropriates them, and transforms them into her own forms. At the same time, she creates her own iconographic pictorial system in that certain motifs recur again and again and are continuously further refined. Not least is Henke testing the conditions and possibilities of sculpture using technically innovative methods of production. In this way she creates engaging sculptures that are often characterized by a clear language of color and form and open up a complex system of reference.

The exhibition has been realized with the kind support of Wemhöner Stiftung, Franz Peine GmbH and SCENTCOMMUNICATION. Museum Marta Herford is supported by Hansestadt Herford and Marta Freunde und Förderer.

Events
Opening Sound as Medium: November 5, 11am–6pm.
Catalog presentation and talk with Lena Henke: November 12, 4–5pm.
Lecture “Seeing with the ear”: November 15, 7pm, by Prof. Dr. Anke Lesinski-Schiedat, Deutsches Hörzentrum Hannover.
Concert Michaela Melián Trio: November 17, 7pm.
24 hour performance “[inner voice]”: November 18, 11am, by Olaf Nicolai.
Marta philharmonisch: November 26, 11:30am, with Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.
Finissage “Sound as Medium” with concert: February 25, 4pm, by Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.