The Swiss Institute presents Jimmie Durham. Maquette for a Museum of Switzerland on view March 7, 2012– April 15, 2012.
Traditional Swiss mask from Jimmie Durham, “Maquette for a Museum of Switzerland,” 2010. Courtesy Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst Zurich and Opdahl Gallery Berlin/Stavanger.
The work of Native American artist Jimmie Durham (b.1940, lives in Rome, Italy) is manifold–as poet, former activist, essayist, and sculptor he deftly mines the fields of art and political reality, infiltrating culture industries in ways that are both ironic and ambivalent. The contemporary work of Durham plays upon the construction and build up of a “postmodern savage.” Durham’s Maquette for a Museum of Switzerland is an institutional-like setting questioning national clichés and symbols and containing objects, masks, photos as well as texts by the artist.
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