Inevitable Distances
2021
“How can we communicate complex histories, and what do those histories reveal back to us about our forms of communication? How do we learn and share knowledge without the need to capture and possess it? How do systems of display and communication affect our relationships to cultural content and life? And what role can pleasure and imagination play in our lives?”
Alongside artist and Professor Renée Green’s exhibition Inevitable Distances at the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich, the museum is hosting a series of public events on November 11th & 12th 2022.
A survey exhibition traveling from Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art and daadgalerie, in its Migros presentation, Inevitable Distances uses “the museum space to make tangible connections between object, image, sound and text. Green’s carefully choreographed exhibition invites visitors to reflect on their own movement and implication in different cultural histories—including stories about the migration of language and of people.”
Hoping to “open up conversation on and a potential re-evaluation of discourses around Green’s oeuvre and her ongoing artistic practice,” a series of public programs will take place next weekend in Zurich. Artists, cultural theorists, curators, art historians, and choreographers will respond to this prompt:
“Renée Green’s work has frequently been discussed in connection to conceptual art, postminimalism and postcolonial theories. But instead of following such preconceived schemes, this symposium seeks out other concepts to approach Green’s complex and manifold practices, and asks: what is the timeliness of a critical review of Green’s practice and its reception now? How might this contemporary reassessment offer us a sense of renewal and interest in engaging with Green’s oeuvre and her ongoing practice? What else does this work tell us about our shared present?”
On Friday November 11th, Green will be in conversation with artist Ima Abasi-Okon, also a contributor to the exhibition’s accompanying book; on Saturday November 12th, in collaboration with Zurich University of the Arts, Migros Museum will host a symposium on Green’s work.
Participants of the symposium include Howie Chen, curator of 80 Washington Square East Gallery at NYU, also a contributor to the Inevitable Distances’ book; Elvan Zabunyan, a contemporary art historian and art critic based in Paris, and a Professor at University of Rennes, Brittany, France; and Trajal Harrell, an American dancer and choreographer, currently an In-House Director in Zürich’s Schauspielehaus. The event will be moderated by Migros Museum’s curator Michael Birchall, with responses from students from the Post-Graduate Programme in Curating, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
In Inevitable Distances–the exhibition, the book, and the symposium–Green’s formally complex work weaves together representations of thinking and living, indicating the encounters and distances traveled in an artist’s life journey, while pointing out to other ways of being.
The exhibition opened in September 24th, 2022, and will remain on view until January 8th, 2023.
More information:
Inevitable Distances: Exhibition. Migros Museum für Gegentwartskunst
Inevitable Distances: Artist’s Talk & Symposium. Migros Museum für Gegentwartskunst
