Calendar
Calendar
The HUM calendar features exhibitions & events by New Zealand arts practitioners working or living abroad.
Mizuho Nishioka in Personal Structures
Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy
23 April —
27 November 2022
Aotearoa artist Mizuho Nishioka presents work from the series MachineTime_NatureTime in Personal Structures at Palazzo Mora in Venice. The work explores the intersection of mediums of human representation and natural systems. Nishioka's work involves photographic processes, material sampling, data streaming and physical computing, with an artistic strategy that involves the natural environment becoming part of the making, and influencing the production of the resulting record.
Aotearoa artist Mizuho Nishioka presents work from the series MachineTime_NatureTime in Personal Structures at Palazzo Mora in Venice. The work explores the intersection of mediums of human representation and natural systems. Nishioka's work involves photographic processes, material sampling, data streaming and physical computing, with an artistic strategy that involves the natural environment becoming part of the making, and influencing the production of the resulting record.
Richard Frater, What remains of a naturalist
Klosterruine, Berlin, Germany
10 December 2023 —
27 April 2024
Richard Frater presents a site-responsive structure at Klosterruine Berlin, a historical monument and space for contemporary art, adapted to local raptors that he had been observing onsite over the spring and summer. In conjunction, the artist presents a comparative video-study that studies the shrinking and expanding territorial ranges of avian species—whether into increasingly remote and hostile environments or into urban expansion—as two unsettling threads of the same conservation reality today.
For the exhibition’s finissage, Frater’s video study is joined by one more screening event; a video for which Frater records his own biological father’s reflections of their trans-identity and gender journey. Here, too, dominant notions of biological determinism, environmental and cultural constructs are combated, however this time through an anthropological moderation of such questions.
Richard Frater presents a site-responsive structure at Klosterruine Berlin, a historical monument and space for contemporary art, adapted to local raptors that he had been observing onsite over the spring and summer. In conjunction, the artist presents a comparative video-study that studies the shrinking and expanding territorial ranges of avian species—whether into increasingly remote and hostile environments or into urban expansion—as two unsettling threads of the same conservation reality today.
For the exhibition’s finissage, Frater’s video study is joined by one more screening event; a video for which Frater records his own biological father’s reflections of their trans-identity and gender journey. Here, too, dominant notions of biological determinism, environmental and cultural constructs are combated, however this time through an anthropological moderation of such questions.
Brent Harris, Surrender & Catch
TarraWarra Museum of Art, Wurundjeri Country, Healesville, Australia
02 December 2023 —
11 March 2024
This exhibition, curated by Maria Zagala, explores the work of artist Brent Harris (b. 1956, Papaioea Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand). Moving between figuration and abstraction, Harris deploys both humour and the grotesque to examine psychological subject matter and visualise his complex and contradictory feelings.
Indeed, the exhibition title refers to Harris’ interest in sociologist Kurt H. Wolff’s notion of ‘surrender and catch’ as a process for self-analysis and as a method of working. Addressing the experience of the body and desire, faith (and the question of what follows death), and childhood memories of porous familial relationships, Harris’ ambiguous forms derive from his use of the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing to access unconscious imagery. Working concurrently across painting, printmaking and drawing, Harris has developed a generative methodology, where each medium feeds the development of his art in unexpected ways.
This exhibition, curated by Maria Zagala, explores the work of artist Brent Harris (b. 1956, Papaioea Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand). Moving between figuration and abstraction, Harris deploys both humour and the grotesque to examine psychological subject matter and visualise his complex and contradictory feelings.
Indeed, the exhibition title refers to Harris’ interest in sociologist Kurt H. Wolff’s notion of ‘surrender and catch’ as a process for self-analysis and as a method of working. Addressing the experience of the body and desire, faith (and the question of what follows death), and childhood memories of porous familial relationships, Harris’ ambiguous forms derive from his use of the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing to access unconscious imagery. Working concurrently across painting, printmaking and drawing, Harris has developed a generative methodology, where each medium feeds the development of his art in unexpected ways.
Yukari Kaihori, Listening to the wind and breath
MA Umi artist residency, Ishigaki Island, Japan
01 December —
20 December 2023
For two weeks in December, Yukari Kaihori participates in a research project at MA Umi artist residency that is guided by the study of the ecological and geographic environment of Ishigaki and Taketomi of Yaeyama Islands and her ongoing interests in the more-than-human-world. During her stay, the artist aims to engage and listen to the local people’s story, folklore and mythology, and visit the site to examine how it is connected to the natural environment today.
MA Umi Residencies is a self-funded and not-for-profit, international hub for artists and researchers. Invited guests concentrate on a wide range of specialisations, disciplines and practices, but come together to live and work in the Northern Peninsula of Ishigaki Island, Japan. The programme is intended to create a lively platform; to collect, discuss, and experiment with the land, the ocean, and nearby communities.
For two weeks in December, Yukari Kaihori participates in a research project at MA Umi artist residency that is guided by the study of the ecological and geographic environment of Ishigaki and Taketomi of Yaeyama Islands and her ongoing interests in the more-than-human-world. During her stay, the artist aims to engage and listen to the local people’s story, folklore and mythology, and visit the site to examine how it is connected to the natural environment today.
MA Umi Residencies is a self-funded and not-for-profit, international hub for artists and researchers. Invited guests concentrate on a wide range of specialisations, disciplines and practices, but come together to live and work in the Northern Peninsula of Ishigaki Island, Japan. The programme is intended to create a lively platform; to collect, discuss, and experiment with the land, the ocean, and nearby communities.
Kah Bee Chow, Études
A Maior, Viseu, Portugal
18 November 2023 —
28 January 2024
A new installation by Sweden and Malaysia-based artist Kah Bee Chow, which includes the artworks Études (2023), a vinyl work installed on the windows of A Maior; Debts (A Maior) (2023), a small sculptural piece made from steel, beeswax, resin and pigment; and 1991 (2023), an altered digital scan of an examination mark form, with translated examiner's comments (translation: Bruno Zhu). Études is produced with support from Konstnärsnämnden.
A new installation by Sweden and Malaysia-based artist Kah Bee Chow, which includes the artworks Études (2023), a vinyl work installed on the windows of A Maior; Debts (A Maior) (2023), a small sculptural piece made from steel, beeswax, resin and pigment; and 1991 (2023), an altered digital scan of an examination mark form, with translated examiner's comments (translation: Bruno Zhu). Études is produced with support from Konstnärsnämnden.
Simon Denny, Landscapes
Fine Arts, Sydney, Sydney, Australia
09 November —
20 December 2023
Fine Arts, Sydney presents four new paintings on linen by Simon Denny; the most recent developments in this format of Denny’s work, which debuted earlier in 2023 with his solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, and have since been the focus of solo exhibitions at Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, Belgium and at Altman Siegel, San Francisco, United States.
These new works are painterly landscapes, each depicting a place in a metaverse. They speak to colonial landscape painting: a genre which, from the 15th—19th centuries and beyond, used the artistic languages of largely European picture-making that were familiar to its intended audience to represent unfamiliar territories and enhance claims to ownership of the places depicted. Adopting the strategy rather than the style, Denny has reinvented and shifted the genre for our time and conditions with an artistic language that feels familiar to us, using styles, formats and techniques of modern and contemporary painting to represent unfamiliar new territories of the metaverse and enhance claims to it.
Fine Arts, Sydney presents four new paintings on linen by Simon Denny; the most recent developments in this format of Denny’s work, which debuted earlier in 2023 with his solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, and have since been the focus of solo exhibitions at Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, Belgium and at Altman Siegel, San Francisco, United States.
These new works are painterly landscapes, each depicting a place in a metaverse. They speak to colonial landscape painting: a genre which, from the 15th—19th centuries and beyond, used the artistic languages of largely European picture-making that were familiar to its intended audience to represent unfamiliar territories and enhance claims to ownership of the places depicted. Adopting the strategy rather than the style, Denny has reinvented and shifted the genre for our time and conditions with an artistic language that feels familiar to us, using styles, formats and techniques of modern and contemporary painting to represent unfamiliar new territories of the metaverse and enhance claims to it.
Mladen Bizumic, COPIA: Collection of Post-Industrial Arts
Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
09 November 2023 —
23 February 2024
Not many people know that Georg Kargl Fine Arts gallery was once a printers, the Druckerei Guberner & Hierhammer, whose presses occupied the gallery’s large central space. Today, this kind of printing is fading from sight, replaced by the digital files pulsing across our screens.
Mladen Bizumic’s solo exhibition COPIA: Collection of Post-Industrial Arts examines and contests this shift, weaving together historical and contemporary photographic techniques into hybrid images, mixtures of analog and digital technology that form part of his ongoing practice of media archeology uncovering our past in order to understand our present.
Not many people know that Georg Kargl Fine Arts gallery was once a printers, the Druckerei Guberner & Hierhammer, whose presses occupied the gallery’s large central space. Today, this kind of printing is fading from sight, replaced by the digital files pulsing across our screens.
Mladen Bizumic’s solo exhibition COPIA: Collection of Post-Industrial Arts examines and contests this shift, weaving together historical and contemporary photographic techniques into hybrid images, mixtures of analog and digital technology that form part of his ongoing practice of media archeology uncovering our past in order to understand our present.
Alexis Hunter, Women in Revolt: Art, Activism and the Women’s movement in the UK 1970–1990
Tate Britain, London, UK
08 November 2023 —
07 April 2024
The first of its kind, Women in Revolt! is a major survey of work by over 100 women artists practicing in the UK from 1970 to 1990, using a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, film and performance.
This exhibition explores and reflects on issues and events such as: the British Women’s Liberation movement, the fight for legal changes impacting women, maternal and domestic experiences, Rock Against Racism and Punk, Greenham Common and the peace movement, the visibility of Black and South Asian Women Artists, Section 28 and the AIDs pandemic.
The show celebrates the work and lived experiences of women who, frequently working outside mainstream art institutions, were largely left out of the artistic narratives of the time. It showcases a productive, politically engaged set of communities, who changed the face of British culture and paved the way for future generations of artists.
The first of its kind, Women in Revolt! is a major survey of work by over 100 women artists practicing in the UK from 1970 to 1990, using a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, film and performance.
This exhibition explores and reflects on issues and events such as: the British Women’s Liberation movement, the fight for legal changes impacting women, maternal and domestic experiences, Rock Against Racism and Punk, Greenham Common and the peace movement, the visibility of Black and South Asian Women Artists, Section 28 and the AIDs pandemic.
The show celebrates the work and lived experiences of women who, frequently working outside mainstream art institutions, were largely left out of the artistic narratives of the time. It showcases a productive, politically engaged set of communities, who changed the face of British culture and paved the way for future generations of artists.
Ta Mataora
Bergman Gallery, Rarotonga, Cook Islands
06 November —
23 December 2023
Ta Mataora is an exhibition of Cook Islands contemporary art, sculpture and film in recognition of the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting held in the Cook Islands from 6—10 November. In the tradition of BCA projects, Tatou (2002) and Te Ata Ou (2003), Ta Mataora presents a survey of recently created Cook Islands artwork, by artists including Mahiriki Tangaroa, Sylvia Marsters, Kay George, Ian George, Tim Buchanan, Brent Holley, Nina Oberg Humphries, Joan Gragg, Glenda Tuaine and Loretta Reynolds.
"As global Pacific influence grows, as a group of self determining Pacific nations, it is political forums like this, hosted in central Polynesia, where we recognise our inherent self worth and learn to play a far larger role in determining our collective future. As the theme of the leaders conference reflects, our choices, our voices, our Pacific way. Ta Mataroa, it's time to celebrate." - Bergman Gallery
Ta Mataora is an exhibition of Cook Islands contemporary art, sculpture and film in recognition of the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting held in the Cook Islands from 6—10 November. In the tradition of BCA projects, Tatou (2002) and Te Ata Ou (2003), Ta Mataora presents a survey of recently created Cook Islands artwork, by artists including Mahiriki Tangaroa, Sylvia Marsters, Kay George, Ian George, Tim Buchanan, Brent Holley, Nina Oberg Humphries, Joan Gragg, Glenda Tuaine and Loretta Reynolds.
"As global Pacific influence grows, as a group of self determining Pacific nations, it is political forums like this, hosted in central Polynesia, where we recognise our inherent self worth and learn to play a far larger role in determining our collective future. As the theme of the leaders conference reflects, our choices, our voices, our Pacific way. Ta Mataroa, it's time to celebrate." - Bergman Gallery
David Rickard, SEISMIC: Art meets Science
GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth, UK
28 October 2023 —
20 January 2024
In SEISMIC: Art meets Science, ten artists present works inspired by or connected to specific scientific ideas, in a dynamic exhibition that comprises painting, photography, film, sculpture and installation.
For each artwork, curator Paul Carey-Kent offers a written interpretation of the piece to sit alongside an informative text by a relevant scientific expert: astrophysicist Professor Bill Chaplin comments on David Rickard’s new installation, which delves into the phenomenon of cosmic rays; biomedical scientist Dr Caroline Pellet-Many explains what lies behind Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva’s sculptural use of guts; and Machine Learning Designer George Simms explores what 0rphan Drift’s consideration of the octopus tells us about artificial intelligence.
In SEISMIC: Art meets Science, ten artists present works inspired by or connected to specific scientific ideas, in a dynamic exhibition that comprises painting, photography, film, sculpture and installation.
For each artwork, curator Paul Carey-Kent offers a written interpretation of the piece to sit alongside an informative text by a relevant scientific expert: astrophysicist Professor Bill Chaplin comments on David Rickard’s new installation, which delves into the phenomenon of cosmic rays; biomedical scientist Dr Caroline Pellet-Many explains what lies behind Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva’s sculptural use of guts; and Machine Learning Designer George Simms explores what 0rphan Drift’s consideration of the octopus tells us about artificial intelligence.
Ilke Gers, in Border Buda
various locations in Brussels, Vilvoorde and Machelen, Belgium
27 October 2023 —
27 October 2026
Land marks is a new multi-component outdoor work from Rotterdam-based artist Ilke Gers, the first in a series of commissioned public artworks by various artists for the three-year cultural project Border Buda.
Spanning the municipalities of Brussels, Vilvoorde and Machelen, in Belgium, Border Buda is an iniative from curators Anna Laganovska and Koi Persyn aiming to revitalise an industrial grey zone. It invites nine artists to realise projects around the transport axes that forms Buda's identity—the railway, the Vilvoorde viaduct, the water, and future bike arteries, and will result in an exhibition and public programme from 26—28 April 2024.
Land marks is a new multi-component outdoor work from Rotterdam-based artist Ilke Gers, the first in a series of commissioned public artworks by various artists for the three-year cultural project Border Buda.
Spanning the municipalities of Brussels, Vilvoorde and Machelen, in Belgium, Border Buda is an iniative from curators Anna Laganovska and Koi Persyn aiming to revitalise an industrial grey zone. It invites nine artists to realise projects around the transport axes that forms Buda's identity—the railway, the Vilvoorde viaduct, the water, and future bike arteries, and will result in an exhibition and public programme from 26—28 April 2024.
Kate Newby, Intimate confession is a project
Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas, USA
27 October 2023 —
10 March 2024
Intimate confession is a project is a group exhibition that considers transmission, intergenerational life, and cultural inheritance through the prism of intimacy and infrastructure. Through the work of ten multifaceted artists spanning generations and geographies, the exhibition thinks through infrastructure as an intimate holding cell, capable of affective and affirmative power.
The title is borrowed from a sonnet line by poet Juliana Spahr and is recast to reflect on the relational infrastructures of cultural material. In recent years, a surge of scholarship on the built and unbuilt environments has emerged contrasting “humans, things, words, and non-humans into patterned conjunctures,” to quote feminist theorist Michelle Murphy. The upper galleries at the Blaffer Art Museum will serve as a conductive space for hosting — to welcome the practices of ten artists, three of them commissions, critically engaging material and immaterial histories of Houston.
Intimate confession is a project is a group exhibition that considers transmission, intergenerational life, and cultural inheritance through the prism of intimacy and infrastructure. Through the work of ten multifaceted artists spanning generations and geographies, the exhibition thinks through infrastructure as an intimate holding cell, capable of affective and affirmative power.
The title is borrowed from a sonnet line by poet Juliana Spahr and is recast to reflect on the relational infrastructures of cultural material. In recent years, a surge of scholarship on the built and unbuilt environments has emerged contrasting “humans, things, words, and non-humans into patterned conjunctures,” to quote feminist theorist Michelle Murphy. The upper galleries at the Blaffer Art Museum will serve as a conductive space for hosting — to welcome the practices of ten artists, three of them commissions, critically engaging material and immaterial histories of Houston.
Maungarongo Te Kawa, Te Whare Pora: A Sacred Space
Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš Sami Centre for Contemporary Art, Karasjok, Norway
26 October 2023 —
21 January 2024
Using sewing as a conduit to connect with people, Maungarongo (Ron) Te Kawa (Ngāti Porou) expertly guides workshop participants to confidently create with fabric and express their genealogy through sewing. His unique quilting style continually explores Māori knowledge, his genealogy and female deities through bold colour and a tactile application of materials. Breaking the rules of traditional quilt construction, all types of fabric are masterfully stitched together to illustrate scenes from his imagination, his history and the stories of the people influential to his life. His quilts burst with energy, a love of making and the utterly democratic way in which he approaches creating.
Te Whare Pora: A Sacred Space is curated by Zoe Black (Managing Director at Objectspace, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland), and realised in collaboration with Norwegian Crafts, where Black was also Curator in Residence from 2020-22. It was first exhibited at NITJA Senter for Samtidskunst in Lillestrøm, Norway from 19 August—24 September 2023.
Using sewing as a conduit to connect with people, Maungarongo (Ron) Te Kawa (Ngāti Porou) expertly guides workshop participants to confidently create with fabric and express their genealogy through sewing. His unique quilting style continually explores Māori knowledge, his genealogy and female deities through bold colour and a tactile application of materials. Breaking the rules of traditional quilt construction, all types of fabric are masterfully stitched together to illustrate scenes from his imagination, his history and the stories of the people influential to his life. His quilts burst with energy, a love of making and the utterly democratic way in which he approaches creating.
Te Whare Pora: A Sacred Space is curated by Zoe Black (Managing Director at Objectspace, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland), and realised in collaboration with Norwegian Crafts, where Black was also Curator in Residence from 2020-22. It was first exhibited at NITJA Senter for Samtidskunst in Lillestrøm, Norway from 19 August—24 September 2023.
The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania
National Museum of Qatar, Doha, Qatar
24 October 2023 —
15 January 2024
The National Museum of Qatar hosts the landmark exhibition The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania, which includes more than 120 works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection to tell the story of creative expression and innovation over the centuries throughout the Pacific Islands. These objects, presented while the Michael C Rockefeller Wing at The Met is being renovated, are travelling for the first time since Nelson Rockefeller gifted the collection to The Met in 1969.
Curated by Dr Maia Nuku (Ngāi Tai), The Shape of Time takes a fresh look at the visual arts of Oceania to explore the deeply rooted connections between Austronesian-speaking peoples. The artefacts on display are noted for their artistic and historic value, varying from wooden sculptures to items of personal adornment and textiles. The artworks come from the many peoples of the region–from the insular region of southeast Asia to Australia and Papua New Guinea to island archipelagoes in the north and eastern Pacific—and date from the 18th century to the present.
The National Museum of Qatar hosts the landmark exhibition The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania, which includes more than 120 works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection to tell the story of creative expression and innovation over the centuries throughout the Pacific Islands. These objects, presented while the Michael C Rockefeller Wing at The Met is being renovated, are travelling for the first time since Nelson Rockefeller gifted the collection to The Met in 1969.
Curated by Dr Maia Nuku (Ngāi Tai), The Shape of Time takes a fresh look at the visual arts of Oceania to explore the deeply rooted connections between Austronesian-speaking peoples. The artefacts on display are noted for their artistic and historic value, varying from wooden sculptures to items of personal adornment and textiles. The artworks come from the many peoples of the region–from the insular region of southeast Asia to Australia and Papua New Guinea to island archipelagoes in the north and eastern Pacific—and date from the 18th century to the present.
Nigel Borell and 15 artists, Indigenous Histories
MASP, São Paulo, Brazil
20 October 2023 —
25 February 2024
Nigel Borell (Pirirākau, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea) is one of twelve international curators to co-ordinate a new major exhibition at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo that presents different accounts of Indigenous histories from South America, North America, Oceania and Scandinavia.
Bringing together over 150 works of multiple media, typologies, origins and periods, from the period before European colonisation to the present, this exhibition refuses to take an all-encompassing or encyclopedic approach to history, but attempts to encompass both fiction and nonfiction, historical accounts as well as personal ones, of a public and private nature, on a micro or macro level. Indigenous Histories presents a more polyphonic, speculative, open, incomplete, processual, and fragmented quality than the traditional notion of History. Following this presentation, the exhibition will travel to Kode in Bergen, Norway, where it will be open from 26 April—25 August 2024.
Participating artists from Aotearoa include: Arnold Manaaki Wilson, Benjamin Pittman, Elizabeth Ellis, Hiraina Marsden, James Tapsell-Kururangi, Jan Dobson, Jessica Hinerangi, Linda Munn, Lonnie Hutchinson, Māhia Te Kore (collaborating with Tanu Gago and Lady Shaka), Merata Mita and Heperi Mita, Mere Lodge, Ngataiharuru Taepa, and Sandy Adsett.
Nigel Borell (Pirirākau, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea) is one of twelve international curators to co-ordinate a new major exhibition at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo that presents different accounts of Indigenous histories from South America, North America, Oceania and Scandinavia.
Bringing together over 150 works of multiple media, typologies, origins and periods, from the period before European colonisation to the present, this exhibition refuses to take an all-encompassing or encyclopedic approach to history, but attempts to encompass both fiction and nonfiction, historical accounts as well as personal ones, of a public and private nature, on a micro or macro level. Indigenous Histories presents a more polyphonic, speculative, open, incomplete, processual, and fragmented quality than the traditional notion of History. Following this presentation, the exhibition will travel to Kode in Bergen, Norway, where it will be open from 26 April—25 August 2024.
Participating artists from Aotearoa include: Arnold Manaaki Wilson, Benjamin Pittman, Elizabeth Ellis, Hiraina Marsden, James Tapsell-Kururangi, Jan Dobson, Jessica Hinerangi, Linda Munn, Lonnie Hutchinson, Māhia Te Kore (collaborating with Tanu Gago and Lady Shaka), Merata Mita and Heperi Mita, Mere Lodge, Ngataiharuru Taepa, and Sandy Adsett.
FAFSWAG Arts Collective in 22nd Biennial Sesc Videobrasil: Memory is an editing session
Sesc 24 de Maio, São Paulo, Brazil
18 October 2023 —
25 February 2024
Entitled Memory is an Editing Station—a phrase taken from the Brazilian poet Waly Salomão (1943–2003)—the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Videobrasil, an initiative initially devoted to video, which has expanded over the decades to encompass a broad range of artistic languages.
Curated by Raphael Fonseca from Brazil, and Renée Akitelek Mboya from Kenya, this edition of the Biennial seeks to address collective memories, acts of remembrance and forgetfulness that build historical and social narratives, related to peoples, nations and geographies. "What are the ethical boundaries of a cut? Who holds the power to do so? How to forge the memory of what we didn't see or feel in our bodies? What are the limits of memory?", the curators ask.
FAFSWAG Arts Collective present their 2017 work FAFSWAGVOGUE.COM, that comprises interactive videos showcasing the Māori and LGBTQIA+ Vogue dance scene in the largest city in the Pacific: Auckland, New Zealand.
Entitled Memory is an Editing Station—a phrase taken from the Brazilian poet Waly Salomão (1943–2003)—the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Videobrasil, an initiative initially devoted to video, which has expanded over the decades to encompass a broad range of artistic languages.
Curated by Raphael Fonseca from Brazil, and Renée Akitelek Mboya from Kenya, this edition of the Biennial seeks to address collective memories, acts of remembrance and forgetfulness that build historical and social narratives, related to peoples, nations and geographies. "What are the ethical boundaries of a cut? Who holds the power to do so? How to forge the memory of what we didn't see or feel in our bodies? What are the limits of memory?", the curators ask.
FAFSWAG Arts Collective present their 2017 work FAFSWAGVOGUE.COM, that comprises interactive videos showcasing the Māori and LGBTQIA+ Vogue dance scene in the largest city in the Pacific: Auckland, New Zealand.
Kate Newby, Our Ecology
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
18 October 2023 —
31 March 2024
The impact of humanity on our planet since the industrial revolution is said to match that of the thousands of preceding years of geological change. The environmental crisis is a challenge of utmost urgency, and right now an important theme on the international art scene. Is there still any possibility of a sustainable future, in which we leave behind the anthropocentrism that has triggered this crisis, and instead, as humans, find a new way of relating to all other, non-human entities?
Contemplating how contemporary art and artists have engaged to date with environmental issues, and how they can do so in future, Our Ecology aims to explore the possibilities left for the sustainable future on a global scale. Featuring a diverse range of pieces—from historical work such as Agnes Denes’ 1982 conjuring of a wheatfield in the capitalist capital Manhattan, to new works made especially for the exhibition—Our Ecology posits the questions: who are we, and to whom does Earth’s environment belong?
The impact of humanity on our planet since the industrial revolution is said to match that of the thousands of preceding years of geological change. The environmental crisis is a challenge of utmost urgency, and right now an important theme on the international art scene. Is there still any possibility of a sustainable future, in which we leave behind the anthropocentrism that has triggered this crisis, and instead, as humans, find a new way of relating to all other, non-human entities?
Contemplating how contemporary art and artists have engaged to date with environmental issues, and how they can do so in future, Our Ecology aims to explore the possibilities left for the sustainable future on a global scale. Featuring a diverse range of pieces—from historical work such as Agnes Denes’ 1982 conjuring of a wheatfield in the capitalist capital Manhattan, to new works made especially for the exhibition—Our Ecology posits the questions: who are we, and to whom does Earth’s environment belong?
Lisa Reihana in Taiwan International Austronesian Art Triennial
Taiwan Indigenous Culture Park, Pingtung County, Taiwan
17 October 2023 —
18 February 2024
Lisa Reihana (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tūteauru, Ngāi Tūpoto) is included in the first iteration of the Taiwan International Austronesian Art Triennial.
Co-curated by Nakaw Putun and Etan Pavavalung, the event adopts the theme of Tracing the Origins, and looks to explore the future of aboriginal culture and art in Taiwan and around the world through the connection, discussion and construction of aboriginal art. The opening ceremony of the TIAAT is on 28 October 2023.
Lisa Reihana (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tūteauru, Ngāi Tūpoto) is included in the first iteration of the Taiwan International Austronesian Art Triennial.
Co-curated by Nakaw Putun and Etan Pavavalung, the event adopts the theme of Tracing the Origins, and looks to explore the future of aboriginal culture and art in Taiwan and around the world through the connection, discussion and construction of aboriginal art. The opening ceremony of the TIAAT is on 28 October 2023.
Kahurangiariki Smith, Lisa Reihana and Yuki Kihara, Singing in Unison Part 8: Between Waves
Industry City, New York, USA
10 October 2023 —
12 January 2024
Between Waves, curated by Alice, Nien-Pu Ko, encompasses contemporary images, stories, histories, and oceanic myths through the works of seventeen artists from the Asia-Pacific region. Focusing on the interconnectedness of islands and oceans linked by transformative technology, the artworks trace currents between individual islands and groups of islanders carrying memory, historical trauma, reflection on co-existence, and new possibilities.
Drawing on histories, oceanic myths, stories, in addition to the shared political traumas resulting from colonialism, the Cold War, militarism, warfare, and ecological disaster, many of the regions remain in constant flux: an ever-changing militarisation throughout the islands. This exhibition explores these layers of complexity through the works of artists, filmmakers, photographers, poets, musicians, and thinkers from Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Borneo, Jeju Island, the Hawaiian islands, Sāmoa and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Between Waves, curated by Alice, Nien-Pu Ko, encompasses contemporary images, stories, histories, and oceanic myths through the works of seventeen artists from the Asia-Pacific region. Focusing on the interconnectedness of islands and oceans linked by transformative technology, the artworks trace currents between individual islands and groups of islanders carrying memory, historical trauma, reflection on co-existence, and new possibilities.
Drawing on histories, oceanic myths, stories, in addition to the shared political traumas resulting from colonialism, the Cold War, militarism, warfare, and ecological disaster, many of the regions remain in constant flux: an ever-changing militarisation throughout the islands. This exhibition explores these layers of complexity through the works of artists, filmmakers, photographers, poets, musicians, and thinkers from Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Borneo, Jeju Island, the Hawaiian islands, Sāmoa and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, Collective
Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada
05 October 2023 —
11 February 2024
Collective is an exhibition of large-scale printed photographs by Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, curated by Jessica Groome.
Collective has been a process of accumulation. Over several years and across many seemingly disparate locations, Bellamy and Fauteux have met with and photographed hundreds of marked trees. The trees and their marks tell us stories of loss, trauma, healing, renewal, cooperation and guardianship. These stories speak to the immediacy of a moment, where bio systems strain under intersecting crises. Bellamy and Fauteux’s work considers how we might approach our relationship with trees through a new lens and to recognise the significance of our interconnectedness, honouring the autonomy of trees as living beings.
Bellamy and Fauteux host an artist talk on 06 October 2023 from 5:30 pm in the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.
Collective is an exhibition of large-scale printed photographs by Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, curated by Jessica Groome.
Collective has been a process of accumulation. Over several years and across many seemingly disparate locations, Bellamy and Fauteux have met with and photographed hundreds of marked trees. The trees and their marks tell us stories of loss, trauma, healing, renewal, cooperation and guardianship. These stories speak to the immediacy of a moment, where bio systems strain under intersecting crises. Bellamy and Fauteux’s work considers how we might approach our relationship with trees through a new lens and to recognise the significance of our interconnectedness, honouring the autonomy of trees as living beings.
Bellamy and Fauteux host an artist talk on 06 October 2023 from 5:30 pm in the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.
Sorawit Songsataya, Gasworks residency
Gasworks, London, UK
02 October —
18 December 2023
Multimedia artist Sorawit Songsataya has been awarded the 2023 Gasworks London residency for an artist from Aotearoa New Zealand. Emcompassing sculpture, moving image, ceramics, textiles, 3D animation and sound, Songsataya’s practice draws from the complex belief systems of their home countries, Thailand and Aotearoa, to reveal dynamic interrelations within the natural world we inhabit. Their works form an in-between zone where references can be made to multiple notions of ‘home’ – from the personal to the planetary dimensions.
During their three-month residency at Gasworks, Songsataya will develop a series of voice recordings with Thai and New Zealand migrants in London. Understanding home and birthplace from a distance will be one of the approaches explored through sound recording and digital animation, unveiling a slow pace of sociocultural transformation and considering the repositioning of place and identity.
This residency is supported by the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust, private individuals who contribute to NZ Friends of Gasworks, the British Council Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific and Creative New Zealand.
Multimedia artist Sorawit Songsataya has been awarded the 2023 Gasworks London residency for an artist from Aotearoa New Zealand. Emcompassing sculpture, moving image, ceramics, textiles, 3D animation and sound, Songsataya’s practice draws from the complex belief systems of their home countries, Thailand and Aotearoa, to reveal dynamic interrelations within the natural world we inhabit. Their works form an in-between zone where references can be made to multiple notions of ‘home’ – from the personal to the planetary dimensions.
During their three-month residency at Gasworks, Songsataya will develop a series of voice recordings with Thai and New Zealand migrants in London. Understanding home and birthplace from a distance will be one of the approaches explored through sound recording and digital animation, unveiling a slow pace of sociocultural transformation and considering the repositioning of place and identity.
This residency is supported by the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust, private individuals who contribute to NZ Friends of Gasworks, the British Council Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific and Creative New Zealand.
Richard Frater, Image Ecology
C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany
16 September 2023 —
18 January 2024
Images of the impact of the climate crisis reach us daily: flooded valleys and coasts, burnt homes, melting glaciers, devastated industrial landscapes, often taken from a birds-eye perspective. Nevertheless, climate change remains strangely hard to grasp.
A new generation of photographers is therefore looking for new ways to address the climate-damaging consequences of a global technical profit-oriented system. For the first time, they are also examining the ecological consequences of photography itself. Photographic images not only show waste, but produce waste themselves. Photography itself consumes resources and does not only depict resource consumption. It presents ecological problems in images, but is itself partly an ecological problem as a network of consumption, labor, energy, material, transport.
With a global perspective, the exhibition Image Ecology provides an overview of the current artistic approaches involving the environment and photographic practices that are related to it. The presented works are not only objects of representation but also reflect the ecology of making pictures.
Images of the impact of the climate crisis reach us daily: flooded valleys and coasts, burnt homes, melting glaciers, devastated industrial landscapes, often taken from a birds-eye perspective. Nevertheless, climate change remains strangely hard to grasp.
A new generation of photographers is therefore looking for new ways to address the climate-damaging consequences of a global technical profit-oriented system. For the first time, they are also examining the ecological consequences of photography itself. Photographic images not only show waste, but produce waste themselves. Photography itself consumes resources and does not only depict resource consumption. It presents ecological problems in images, but is itself partly an ecological problem as a network of consumption, labor, energy, material, transport.
With a global perspective, the exhibition Image Ecology provides an overview of the current artistic approaches involving the environment and photographic practices that are related to it. The presented works are not only objects of representation but also reflect the ecology of making pictures.
Ruth Buchanan, SKIN IN THE GAME
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany
14 September 2023 —
07 January 2024
Curated by Clémentine Deliss, SKIN IN THE GAME presents seminal prototypes from the personal archives of internationally acclaimed artists, dating back to the 1980s and crossing over into the present. Exhibits include experiments never previously shown, from paintings to sculptures, to banners, video performances, photographs, collages, drawings, books and concept notes. The works focus on that moment of professional and existential emancipation when these artists threw their skin in the game, and gave their all to art. Complementing early prototypes are new productions for the exhibition by Collier Schorr, Ruth Buchanan, Otobong Nkanga and Joëlle Tuerlinckx. The exhibition choreography is devised in collaboration with Joëlle Tuerlinckx.
Curated by Clémentine Deliss, SKIN IN THE GAME presents seminal prototypes from the personal archives of internationally acclaimed artists, dating back to the 1980s and crossing over into the present. Exhibits include experiments never previously shown, from paintings to sculptures, to banners, video performances, photographs, collages, drawings, books and concept notes. The works focus on that moment of professional and existential emancipation when these artists threw their skin in the game, and gave their all to art. Complementing early prototypes are new productions for the exhibition by Collier Schorr, Ruth Buchanan, Otobong Nkanga and Joëlle Tuerlinckx. The exhibition choreography is devised in collaboration with Joëlle Tuerlinckx.
Talia Smith, Primavera 2023: Young Australian Artists
Modern Contemporary Art in Australia, Sydney, Australia
09 September 2023 —
04 February 2024
Primavera: Young Australian Artists is MCA's annual exhibition of emerging artists living and working in Australia, aged 35 years and under. In its 32nd year, Primavera 2023 is guest curated by Sydney-based artist and curator, Talia Smith (b. Ngāmotu, Aotearoa New Zealand) and considers the idea of the ‘collective body’ and the ways in which communities and growing movements attempt to question, challenge and manoeuvre through failing societal structures. The six participating artists—Tiyan Baker, Christopher Bassi, Moorina Bonini, Nikki Lam, Sarah Poulgrain and Truc Truong—investigate themes of protest, perseverance, and reimagining through works of various media, including installation, video, painting, sculpture and text.
"What brings these artists together is the way they reckon with the perils of history, education, culture, and language to question authoritative structures and systems. They assert that there is more than one way of living and offer impressions of how it might look." — Talia Smith
Primavera: Young Australian Artists is MCA's annual exhibition of emerging artists living and working in Australia, aged 35 years and under. In its 32nd year, Primavera 2023 is guest curated by Sydney-based artist and curator, Talia Smith (b. Ngāmotu, Aotearoa New Zealand) and considers the idea of the ‘collective body’ and the ways in which communities and growing movements attempt to question, challenge and manoeuvre through failing societal structures. The six participating artists—Tiyan Baker, Christopher Bassi, Moorina Bonini, Nikki Lam, Sarah Poulgrain and Truc Truong—investigate themes of protest, perseverance, and reimagining through works of various media, including installation, video, painting, sculpture and text.
"What brings these artists together is the way they reckon with the perils of history, education, culture, and language to question authoritative structures and systems. They assert that there is more than one way of living and offer impressions of how it might look." — Talia Smith
Pelenakeke Brown and Sally Tran, BRIClab residency
BRIC, New York City, USA
01 September 2023 —
01 September 2024
Two artists from Aotearoa have been selected as part of the 2023/2024 BRIClab artist in residence programme: Pelenakeke Brown in the Contemporary Art group, and Sally Tran in the Film + TV group.
A year-long journey for emerging and mid-career artists, this year's programme is all about connection and collaboration, exploring topics like mutual aid, artistic care, and interconnectedness. In-process public events for the 2023/2024 cohort will take place from September 2023 through May 2024.
Two artists from Aotearoa have been selected as part of the 2023/2024 BRIClab artist in residence programme: Pelenakeke Brown in the Contemporary Art group, and Sally Tran in the Film + TV group.
A year-long journey for emerging and mid-career artists, this year's programme is all about connection and collaboration, exploring topics like mutual aid, artistic care, and interconnectedness. In-process public events for the 2023/2024 cohort will take place from September 2023 through May 2024.
Seung Yul Oh, Orbit
101 Collins St, Melbourne, Australia
15 August 2023 —
15 August 2028
Orbit (2023) is a newly commissioned sculpture project by Seung Yul Oh consisting of a pair of 6.5m high mirror-polish bronze infinity symbols, which cantilever over the Collins Street entrance of the 101 Collins lobby. These two large-scale sculptures articulate the central ceiling space, highlighting its grand vastness, while embracing the viewer in a nurturing but also comic and slightly unnerving way. Coated in lush liquid mirror polish, Orbit captures and mimics the movement of people in the space, at once reflecting the bodies of the viewers while they simultaneously dematerialise and become part of it.
Orbit is one of five projects commissioned by Curator Emily Cormack destined to join the permanent collection of the 101 Collins Street initiative.
Orbit (2023) is a newly commissioned sculpture project by Seung Yul Oh consisting of a pair of 6.5m high mirror-polish bronze infinity symbols, which cantilever over the Collins Street entrance of the 101 Collins lobby. These two large-scale sculptures articulate the central ceiling space, highlighting its grand vastness, while embracing the viewer in a nurturing but also comic and slightly unnerving way. Coated in lush liquid mirror polish, Orbit captures and mimics the movement of people in the space, at once reflecting the bodies of the viewers while they simultaneously dematerialise and become part of it.
Orbit is one of five projects commissioned by Curator Emily Cormack destined to join the permanent collection of the 101 Collins Street initiative.
Angela Tiatia, George Nuku, Louisa Humphrey and Yuki Kihara, Rising Tide: Art and Environment in Oceania
National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
12 August 2023 —
14 April 2024
Delve into the most important and pressing issue of our time, humanity’s damaging relationship with planet Earth. This urgent issue is felt especially deeply in Australia and the Pacific Islands where sea levels are rising due to climate change and the oceans are filling with plastic.
Rising Tide considers our relationship to the natural environment through contemporary responses to climate change and plastic waste by Indigenous Australian and Pacific Islander artists. Master fisherman Anthony C Guerrero's contemporary woven baskets made from plastic construction strapping found on his local beach in Guam will be on display.
The exhibition hosts video work by Angela Tiatia, the latest version of artist George Nuku’s installation, Bottled Ocean 2123, which imagines the state of the oceans 100 years into the future in an immersive, undersea landscape crafted from single-use plastic bottles, weaving by Louisa Humphrey, and a set of five kimono titled A Song About Sāmoa by Yuki Kihara.
Delve into the most important and pressing issue of our time, humanity’s damaging relationship with planet Earth. This urgent issue is felt especially deeply in Australia and the Pacific Islands where sea levels are rising due to climate change and the oceans are filling with plastic.
Rising Tide considers our relationship to the natural environment through contemporary responses to climate change and plastic waste by Indigenous Australian and Pacific Islander artists. Master fisherman Anthony C Guerrero's contemporary woven baskets made from plastic construction strapping found on his local beach in Guam will be on display.
The exhibition hosts video work by Angela Tiatia, the latest version of artist George Nuku’s installation, Bottled Ocean 2123, which imagines the state of the oceans 100 years into the future in an immersive, undersea landscape crafted from single-use plastic bottles, weaving by Louisa Humphrey, and a set of five kimono titled A Song About Sāmoa by Yuki Kihara.
Shannon Te Ao, Mare Amoris | Sea of Love
University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia
25 July 2023 —
20 January 2024
Mare Amoris | Sea of Love gathers creative and intellectual practices that dissolve the colonial boundaries of oceans and their connected waters. Artists and their kin give language, voice, and form to these watery spaces, passed down through matrilineal storytelling, bodily memory and land-based knowledge systems. Through artworks that confront the complexities of love, rage, grief and healing, Mare Amoris embraces love as an uprising: an active force with which to mobilise, organise, and create room for radical expressions of care beyond capital.
Artists include Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Christopher Bassi, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, Seba Calfuqueo, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Sonja Carmichael, Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Mariquita ‘Micki’ Davis, Djambawa Marawili, New Mineral Collective, Santiago Mostyn, Leyla Stevens, Shannon Te Ao, Unbound Collective and Judy Watson. Curated by Peta Rake, Léuli Eshrāghi, Isabella Baker and Jocelyn Flynn.
Mare Amoris | Sea of Love gathers creative and intellectual practices that dissolve the colonial boundaries of oceans and their connected waters. Artists and their kin give language, voice, and form to these watery spaces, passed down through matrilineal storytelling, bodily memory and land-based knowledge systems. Through artworks that confront the complexities of love, rage, grief and healing, Mare Amoris embraces love as an uprising: an active force with which to mobilise, organise, and create room for radical expressions of care beyond capital.
Artists include Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Christopher Bassi, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, Seba Calfuqueo, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Sonja Carmichael, Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Mariquita ‘Micki’ Davis, Djambawa Marawili, New Mineral Collective, Santiago Mostyn, Leyla Stevens, Shannon Te Ao, Unbound Collective and Judy Watson. Curated by Peta Rake, Léuli Eshrāghi, Isabella Baker and Jocelyn Flynn.
Pelenakeke Brown, Don't mind if I do
MoCA Cleveland, Cleveland, USA
07 July 2023 —
07 July 2024
Sharing the work of seven artists who have influenced North-American multidisciplinary artist Finnegan Shannon's practice, Don’t mind if I do blurs boundaries between public and private. It puts representations of everyday life that are usually tucked away at home on display. Plastic pill bottles scattered across nightstands share space with a tissue box cover that reminds us of moments of sickness and sadness. Sculptural snapshots of an intimate interspecies bond sit beside gender-affirming packers that feel most at home tucked inside our clothes. They signify illness, reveal systems of support, and are used in play.
Don’t mind if I do destabilises rigid ableist and exclusionary museum “best practices” like sparse seating, untouchable objects, dense wall labels, and guards who protect rather than invite engagement. It is a project built upon a framework of flexibility. By welcoming glitches, inviting informality and messiness, and unsettling the hierarchy of objects, Don’t mind if I do prioritises people over artwork and makes more room for us to show up as our full selves.
Sharing the work of seven artists who have influenced North-American multidisciplinary artist Finnegan Shannon's practice, Don’t mind if I do blurs boundaries between public and private. It puts representations of everyday life that are usually tucked away at home on display. Plastic pill bottles scattered across nightstands share space with a tissue box cover that reminds us of moments of sickness and sadness. Sculptural snapshots of an intimate interspecies bond sit beside gender-affirming packers that feel most at home tucked inside our clothes. They signify illness, reveal systems of support, and are used in play.
Don’t mind if I do destabilises rigid ableist and exclusionary museum “best practices” like sparse seating, untouchable objects, dense wall labels, and guards who protect rather than invite engagement. It is a project built upon a framework of flexibility. By welcoming glitches, inviting informality and messiness, and unsettling the hierarchy of objects, Don’t mind if I do prioritises people over artwork and makes more room for us to show up as our full selves.
Jade Hadfield, MIRROR: New views on photography
State Library Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
19 May 2023 —
28 January 2024
Great photography can hold up a mirror to the world and reflect our innermost thoughts and feelings. MIRROR: New views on photography showcases over 140 photographs from the State Collection, alongside creative responses from emerging and established Victorian storytellers to tell fascinating tales of Victoria through a contemporary lens.
Curated by Jade Hadfield (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Whatua), the exhibition combines the photos of Rennie Ellis, Viva Gibb, Helmut Newton and more, with the words, performance and sounds of Alice Skye, Christos Tsiolkas, Jason Tamiru, Walter Kadiki and other storytellers to produce new narratives of Victorian people and places. The photographs are displayed as immersive large-scale projections on the walls of the Library’s Victoria Gallery, offering striking imagery alongside contemporary creative and critical responses.
Great photography can hold up a mirror to the world and reflect our innermost thoughts and feelings. MIRROR: New views on photography showcases over 140 photographs from the State Collection, alongside creative responses from emerging and established Victorian storytellers to tell fascinating tales of Victoria through a contemporary lens.
Curated by Jade Hadfield (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Whatua), the exhibition combines the photos of Rennie Ellis, Viva Gibb, Helmut Newton and more, with the words, performance and sounds of Alice Skye, Christos Tsiolkas, Jason Tamiru, Walter Kadiki and other storytellers to produce new narratives of Victorian people and places. The photographs are displayed as immersive large-scale projections on the walls of the Library’s Victoria Gallery, offering striking imagery alongside contemporary creative and critical responses.
Ruth Buchanan, A Garden with Bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear)
jobcenter Mönchengladbach, Germany
07 May 2023 —
07 May 2028
Five years after preparations began, Ruth Buchanan's A Garden with Bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear) is now realised on the property of the Mönchengladbach job center. Featuring a pavilion meant to serve as a focal point for social interactions, this artwork aims to suspend the hierarchies that dominate our society.
The project responds to the job center and the Stiftisches Humanistisches Gymnasium, a local high school, jointly approaching the New Patrons Initiative in 2018 with the idea of developing a place for social interactions: an open, yet protected site where the urban community could come together. Mediator Kathrin Jentjens tapped Aotearoa New Zealand artist Ruth Buchanan for the commission, which is being implemented through the Kunststiftung im Museum Abteiberg with the help of public and private, local and international funds and—significantly—generous volunteer work on the part of businesses and citizens in the city.
Five years after preparations began, Ruth Buchanan's A Garden with Bridges (spine, stomach, throat, ear) is now realised on the property of the Mönchengladbach job center. Featuring a pavilion meant to serve as a focal point for social interactions, this artwork aims to suspend the hierarchies that dominate our society.
The project responds to the job center and the Stiftisches Humanistisches Gymnasium, a local high school, jointly approaching the New Patrons Initiative in 2018 with the idea of developing a place for social interactions: an open, yet protected site where the urban community could come together. Mediator Kathrin Jentjens tapped Aotearoa New Zealand artist Ruth Buchanan for the commission, which is being implemented through the Kunststiftung im Museum Abteiberg with the help of public and private, local and international funds and—significantly—generous volunteer work on the part of businesses and citizens in the city.