Goseriede 11
30159 Hanover
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–6pm,
Thursday 11am–8pm
With the 2024 theme Between Past and Future, Kestner Gesellschaft concludes a trilogy of its self-reflection which began with the 2022 investigation of the notion of tenderness (Olga Tokarczuk) and was continued in 2023 by a series of exhibitions, focused on the concept of anabasis (Paul Celan). Amor Mundi and eight exercises in political thought by one of the most relevant thinkers of today’s age, Hanover-born Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) are considered master-narratives for this year’s exhibition program, and constitute a frame of reference for the future.
March 23–June 30
Anna K. E.: Dolorem Ipsum (Silence In My Pocket)
Moving freely between the different languages of architecture, design and art, Anna K. E. (born 1986, Tbilisi, Georgia) is focused on analysing and transgressing the existing and self-made cultural, social and artistic paradigms. “Marked by the gestures of a ballerina and the scores of a choreographer”, her often site-specific installations incorporate performative elements of the artist’s afterthoughts and memory. In Dolorem Ipsum, the artist’s take at the archaeology of the future, Anna K. E. transforms the interiors of the Kestner Gesellschaft into a chapel of critical nostalgia: “There is a posture, that has been hold and defined, in spirit of freedom, in spirit of revel. There is auxiliary sense of time that has been defined, in spirit of freedom, in spirit of revel.”
Roger Hiorns: Today
The work of Roger Hiorns (born 1975, Birmingham, UK) is a thoughtful reflection upon the fragility of human life and the matrix of political structures that condition it. The notion of authority, the authoritarian systems and the control they impose lie at the core of his multifaceted practice. “Over a number of years”, the artist writes, “I have tried to portray the body and its being in the many variations of pressure and condition it suffers, within a studio practice that is poor and ungovernable.” Today is Hiorns’ first solo exhibition in an art institution in Germany. It consists of a fine selection of his iconic living sculptures from the series “Youths” in a dialogue with the artist’s poignant series of sex paintings. Additionally, a new work—a sound installation, based upon BBC daily morning broadcast “Today”—will be on view.
Project Space Shifting Present
Nira Pereg, Abraham Abraham Sarah Sarah
Nira Pereg (born 1969, Tel Aviv, Israel) is investigating the mechanisms of power structures and the ontology of violence and exclusion. Her two-channel video installation Abraham Abraham Sarah Sarah , 2012, shot in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, examines the unbearable logic of an impossible symmetry. Here, Pereg focuses on hastily evacuated spaces that build up anticipation for the imminent takeover.
Facade
Alfredo Jaar, Be Afraid of the Enormity of the Possible
Based on a quote from the Romanian philosopher Emile Cioran (1911–1995)—one of Alfredo Jaar’s favorite writers—this neon work reflects the paradoxical quality by displaying a potentially positive and negative message at the same time, thus creates a monument to uncertainty, for the dark times in which we live. According to Jaar (born 1956, Santiago de Chile, Chile), Cioran is the poet of pessimism, and the writer who best expresses the duality of the contemporary condition and its strenuous harmony torn between despair and joy. Over his career, Jaar has explored significant political and social issues including genocide, the displacement of refugees across borders, and the balance of power between developing and industrialized nations.
April 20–November 24
Rebecca Ackroyd, Mirror Stage
Collateral Event of the 60th Venice Biennale
Kestner Gesellschaft is thrilled to present a collateral event to this year’s Venice Biennale: Rebecca Ackroyd’s exhibition Mirror Stage, conceived specifically for the spaces of Fondaco Marcello, and imagined as a theatrical counterpart to Period Drama, the artist’s solo exhibition at the Kestner Gesellschaft (November 2023–February 2024). Taking its title from the homonymous Lacanian notion describing a fundamental development step in the child’s distinction between the self and others, the exhibition ambiguously plays with the figure of the mirror as a reflective tool—through the mirror we insert ourselves in the surrounding world—as well as a symbol of the division between the conscious and unconscious states. Ackroyd’s Mirror Stage explores iconography and representation, desire and disgust, repetition and fragmentation, using replication and casting as a way of distorting an idea of perceived reality.
July 27–September 22
Me, Myself, I Dance Too
Summer-Dream-Prelude to Hannah Arendt: Performative Discourse
Lecture/reading/concert/performance/film-screening
With an architectural intervention by Samuel Korn, University of Kassel and a performative work by Ewa Partum, New Horizon Is a Wave
I Dance I Dance / In an Ironic Glow
October 19, 2024–March 16, 2025
Between Past and Future: On Hannah Arendt
Eight Exercises in Political Thought
Based upon Hannah Arendt’s 1961 seminal oeuvre Between Past and Future, this exhibition aims at reconsidering “eight exercises in political thought”: tradition and the modern age, the concept of history, what is authority, what is freedom, the crisis in education, the crisis in culture, truth and politics, and, last but not least, the conquest of space. Arendt’s analysis of the perplexing crises modern society faces provides guidelines to understand today’s world.
With: Eleanor Antin, Thomas Bayrle, Renate Bertlmann, Aleksandra Domanović, Lili Dujourie, Bracha L. Ettinger, Veronique Filozof, Peter Kennard, Vivienne Koorland, Laima Leyton, Everlyn Nicodemus, Pamela Rosenkranz, Allan Sekula, Lerato Shadi, Jo Spence, Ulay, and others…
Project Space Shifting Present
Alexander Dorner: Living Museum, or the Unfinished Work of a Museum Pioneer
This is a modest attempt at a monographic exhibition about the radical ideas of one of the most innovative and influential museum directors of the early 20th century Germany, Alexander Dorner (1893–1957). The first Chairman of the Kestner Gesellschaft and Director of the Provincial Museum Hanover, Dorner claimed that the meaning of the history should determine the validity of our time: merging the past, present and future into a living force allows the museum to transform from a storage place into a power plant of the future culture.
Tender Buttons Café Commission
Mathilde Rosier, Untitled
Symbiosis between man and nature lies at the centre of the phantasmagoric work of Mathilde Rosier (born 1973, Paris, France). Her hybrid, performative work draws on her interest in mystical experiences of ancient rites and rituals.
Facade
AA Bronson
A pioneer of collaborative and queer visual art practice, AA Bronson (born 1946, Vancouver, Canada) is the sole surviving member of the art collective General Idea (1969–94). He has had a long history with political and social issues in art and publishing, and has collaborated with many generations of artists across many disciplines. Exploring profound human states such as loss, death, healing, grief, love, sexuality, joy, lust, desire and violence, AA’s work combines deeply felt personal and social trauma and reflects upon the politics of emancipation and critical intimacy.
