On Representation, Authenticity, Expectations and Other Inflated Concepts
Opening: Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013, 7pm Exhibition: Dec. 8, 2013 – Jan. 7, 2014
Artists: William Cordova, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Yoel Diaz Vazquez, Köken Ergun, Alex Martinis Roe, Katrin Ströbel, Emeka Udemba
Curator: To Whom It May Concern
Art directors: Dr. Bonaventure S.B. Ndikung, Dr. Elena Agudio
Opening Hours: Thu - Sun, 4-8pm
and by appointment
SAVVY Contemporary I Richardstr.20 I 12043 Berlin-Neukölln
Image: Emeka Udemba
There seems to be a common consensus in contemporary culture with regards to the propensity to explore practices of representation of places, times, and people, including their gender, race, abilities or disabilities. Even more so when it comes to the kinship of all aspects of representation to the notion of authenticity. These concepts are considered to be over-interrogated, over-discoursed and washed-up. But is this position justified if cultural production, presentation and discourses are still framed by expectations, and national or geographic representations? What is this consensus worth when political and economic debates still circulate around gender and race quotas?
Wahala is a bid to investigate presentation and representation in artistic production using art as a tool, and get a grip on the parasitic power mechanisms that feed on these concepts. The exhibition project will examine the strategies of renegotiating stereotypes of representation, and inter alia impart a carnivalesque and satirical overtone to these notions. It will be a trial to make sense and find a vocabulary to articulate and elucidate, in a hermeneutic way, the troubled waters - the Wahala, which essentially accompanies or is an aftermath of representation and authenticity.
