Forschungsplattform Gain – Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities der Univ. Wien (Web)

Time: 03.-24.11.2023
Venue: Semmelweisklinik | Centre for Arts and Culture, Hockeg. 37/4, 1180 Vienna

An interdisciplinary exhibition presenting artists who imagine a new visual politics of queer representation and explore the connection between desires, ways of living and societal change in visible and/or invisible ways. The organizers of „Close[t] Demonstrations“ chose a title that playfully introduces and signals elements of transparency, publicness, opacity, invisibility and visibility and their liminalities. Closets and the communities they hold are featured ‘closely’; What it means to be public and to demonstrate for equality becomes reflected; And even monsters are ‘(de)monstrated’ and contained by the title.
The exhibition comprises the work of artists from around the world showcasing work that addresses the relationship between the political and the visual, and explores visual aspects of today’s queer lives, struggles and imaginations. The 18 artworks attempt to unearth the power dynamics, pleasures, and desires involved in queer in_visibilty, and the diverse ways queer in_visibilities manifest within (post)colonial, authoritarian, neoliberal, capitalist regimes.

Guided tours, lectures, workshops, discussions (Web)
„Close[t] Demonstrations“ includes zines, videos, installations, films, drawings, embroidery, sculptures, ceramics and illustrations, all of which will be in conversation with each other addressing the topic through different techniques and methodologies. The artists come from Kyiv, Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, Helsinki, Athens, Erzurum, Dhaka, Dnipro, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Oaxaca, Almaty and London.
The „Close[t] Demonstrations“ exhibition space and catalogue are in some combination of Arabic, Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS), Bangla, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Cypriot Turkish, East Frisian, English, Fante, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, IsiXhosa, Kurdish, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tatar, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
The exhibition program includes guided tours in German with interpreting into Austrian sign language, as well as guided tours in English, Ukrainian, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Montenegrin, Turkish and Russian. Moreover, the visitors can participate in performances by Pêdra Costa, a workshop on creative writing through multiple discriminations with Masha Beketova and Syrine Boukadida, a lecture on the relationship between visual and political representation by Elahe Haschemi Yekani and discussions on the conditions of (im)possibility for art creation with Olenka Syaivo Dmytryk and on the optics of queer migration with Tegiye Birey, Ewa Maczynska and Henri Dennis. Read more … (Web)