Knowledge Is a Garden

With works by: Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Sammy Baloji, Lothar Baumgarten, Teresa Burga, Maria Eichhorn, Dani Gal, General Idea, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Eva Kot’átková, Susan Hiller, Zahra Malkani, Teresa Margolles, Senga Nengudi, Uriel Orlow, Elodie Pong, Ed Ruscha, Munem Wasif

What possibilities emerge when we see knowledge, which is presumably fixed, as something growing? The title of the exhibition, Knowledge Is a Garden, derives from an African proverb: “Knowledge is like a garden: if it’s not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.”

Taking this saying as his starting point, Uriel Orlow unpacks the question of what a garden of knowledge could be and what this cultivation and growth means. In keeping with his interests, the artist sets up a dialogue between his own works and those of the museum collection, which for their part raise questions around the production of knowledge. This selection is expanded by loans—artists from parts of the Global South, who expand the previous geographical focus of the collection on Europe, USA and Latin America, and who engage with suppressed history and traditional knowledge in their artistic practice.

Knowledge Is a Garden is an artistic engagement with the repression of knowledge, the unjust appropriation of the same, and ultimately with new forms of producing and varying knowledge. Knowledge does not consist of neutral facts and information—and is never all-encompassing. Rather, it is always located, historical, and, above all, contested and vulnerable. The question of who gets to speak and whose voice is silenced is as urgent as ever—and marked by global inequality. The three loose thematic threads of the exhibition open up illustrative spaces for conceptualisation: the concern is with the entanglement of knowledge and language, and their loss; with the acquisition of knowledge and exploitation of raw materials in the Global South by countries of the Global North; and with wilfully not wanting to know and consciously looking away. Both Uriel Orlow’s own works and the pieces in the museum’s collection and loans can be related to one or several of these broader themes.

Curatded by Uriel Orlow and Nadia Schneider Willen; Curatorial Assistant: Louisa Behr

Additional exhibition
Stretching thresholds, holding streams

For the first time, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst has commissioned an artist working in the field of socially engaged art: Stretching thresholds, holding streams is a project initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and developed with Sophie Mak-Schram and collaborators. A growing constellation of invested people from the surroundings of the Museum are being invited to think in and with the museum’s thresholds. Together—as makers, artists, activists, neighbours, and associations—they are working on a project that takes its starting point inside the museum and flows in and out of it, over a period of several months. Therefore, a central aspect of the project is the notion of a “stream.”

It symbolizes the flow of ideas, stories, influences, and ethics that move within, through and around the museum—connecting it to people, places and ways of knowing outside of it. Vitally, streams also denote both directions of movement and refer to how people enter and bring into the museum as much as vice versa. Within the museum, there will be things to see, places to sit comfortably, ideas to question, and different encounters to learn through and with. From September 28, 2024 onwards, streams will weave into and out of the museum at different paces: with changing physical layouts and activities that visitors can engage and reflect on as these streams unfold.