Gasworks presents Late Barbarians: Juan Downey, Lili Dujourie, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Matts Leiderstam and Chris Marker on view 24 January–9 March 2014.
The exhibition takes its title from an expression by German sociologist Norbert Elias, which suggests that our future descendants may eventually consider us to have lived during an extended medieval period, implying that we share far greater affinities with our Barbarian forefathers than we might like to think (1). Similarly, the works on show question linear interpretations of history, invoking a present that is haunted by the gestures of our ancestors.
Paying particular attention to art-historical representations of the body, photographs by Matts Leiderstam propose a queer re-reading of the gestures depicted in Renaissance paintings, whereas Lili Dujourie‘s abstract, single-take “dances to camera” attempt to divorce particular habits of the body from their entrenched social connotations. In contrast, a new commission by Sidsel Meineche Hansen comprising a clay sculpture and symposium examines the human head—separate from the body—as a symbol of patriarchy and power.
Other video works in the exhibition explore reflections of the self in historical art and architecture. Juan Downey‘s The Looking Glass (1981) decodes the iconography of the mirror in paintings housed in famous European museums and heritage sites, considering them as tokens of an adopted culture. Sharing Downey’s incisive humour, Chris Marker‘s Pictures at an Exhibition (2008) presents a virtual exhibition tour in the online world of Second Life that weaves together personal and collective histories in an ad-hoc museum for the digital age.
Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday noon–6pm
www.gasworks.org.uk