Group exhibition
with total installation:
with total installation:
ID: E19.3
Title:
We Will Not Change Our Show
Date:
February 5 — March 24, 2019
Place:
Brno House of Art (Dům pánů z Kunštátu), Brno, Czech
Curators:
Gyula Muskovics, Martin Vaněk
Artists:
Veronika Šrek Bromová, #FLUID (Alex Bălă, Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker), Jan Matýsek, Ruben Montini, Kateřina Olivová, Gyula Muskovics & Tamás Páll & Viktor Szeri, Karol Radziszewski, Sergey Shabohin, Lilla Szász and Express Yourself
Work:
Total installation Fear of Castration: Darkroom-Labyrinth
Sergey Shabohin:
total installation
Fear of Castration:
Darkroom-Labyrinth,
2019
total installation
Fear of Castration:
Darkroom-Labyrinth,
2019
Explication:
The exhibition is an international group project of two curators and several Czech and foreign artists linked by their work with LGBT themes and gender issues. The aim is to present and examine the issues of the freedom of artistic expression, freedom of speech, confidentiality, privacy and openness from the position of LGBT. The curators and the selected artists are convinced that exactly at this time it is necessary to use art to express one’s political beliefs and to defend artistic freedom. From the onset the exhibition will be approached as both a purely artistic and a political act which should send a clear and strong message regarding the position of freedom. It will encompass selected earlier works by the artists as well as works created most recently or even in situ and it will accompany the concurrently running exhibition Feminist Avant-garde in the House of Arts on Malinovského Square.
The exhibition “We Will Not Change Our Show” brings together artists from Central and Eastern Europe, working in a variety of media and elaborating on diverse aspects of their own queer identity expression. The curatorial position is based on the idea of freedom of speech and artistic expression, assuming that the discussion on LGBT issues is a litmus paper of tolerant society. The exhibition title is a free paraphrase of American pop icon Madonna's words when referring to the same issue (Madonna: Truth or Dare, directed by Alek Keshishian, 1991). Just as we do not change our show, we will not change our queer identity following the needs of the heteronormative society. It does not matter whether you are gay/lesbian, heterosexual, young or old, addicted to love, sex, pop culture, philosophy or science – the freedom of every such individual means freedom of the whole.
Although in Eastern Europe homosexuality was decriminalized relatively early – already in the 1960s – it paradoxically remained a taboo in the former socialist bloc until the mid-1990s. The current situation of LGBT minorities in Eastern Europe is diverse. While the queer community in the Czech Republic is fighting for the rights to marry and adopt children, in other countries of the former Eastern Bloc gay identity still experiences lack of understanding and tolerance and is still fighting for fundamental rights and freedoms.
The exhibition aims to present the queer issue in its current context of Central and Eastern Europe. On the one hand, we are interested in the use of public space and the possibilities it provides for the expression of queer identity thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and on the other hand we are also interested in what is hidden from the eyes of the heteronormative society. Spaces such as darkrooms are not just places intended to merely hide sexuality from other people’s eyes. Secrets usually inform about how much freedom of expression and speech we actually have. At the same time, an act invisible to the eyes of the majority society, taking place between individualistic anonymous characters, constitutes an experience that is not communicable. It speaks mainly about the relationship between the majority and minority. We therefore believe that darkness has the same political potential as light. It is obvious that this environment is based on the same hieratic, normative and traumatic principles as the ordinary public space.
The exhibition “We Will Not Change Our Show” brings together artists from Central and Eastern Europe, working in a variety of media and elaborating on diverse aspects of their own queer identity expression. The curatorial position is based on the idea of freedom of speech and artistic expression, assuming that the discussion on LGBT issues is a litmus paper of tolerant society. The exhibition title is a free paraphrase of American pop icon Madonna's words when referring to the same issue (Madonna: Truth or Dare, directed by Alek Keshishian, 1991). Just as we do not change our show, we will not change our queer identity following the needs of the heteronormative society. It does not matter whether you are gay/lesbian, heterosexual, young or old, addicted to love, sex, pop culture, philosophy or science – the freedom of every such individual means freedom of the whole.
Although in Eastern Europe homosexuality was decriminalized relatively early – already in the 1960s – it paradoxically remained a taboo in the former socialist bloc until the mid-1990s. The current situation of LGBT minorities in Eastern Europe is diverse. While the queer community in the Czech Republic is fighting for the rights to marry and adopt children, in other countries of the former Eastern Bloc gay identity still experiences lack of understanding and tolerance and is still fighting for fundamental rights and freedoms.
The exhibition aims to present the queer issue in its current context of Central and Eastern Europe. On the one hand, we are interested in the use of public space and the possibilities it provides for the expression of queer identity thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and on the other hand we are also interested in what is hidden from the eyes of the heteronormative society. Spaces such as darkrooms are not just places intended to merely hide sexuality from other people’s eyes. Secrets usually inform about how much freedom of expression and speech we actually have. At the same time, an act invisible to the eyes of the majority society, taking place between individualistic anonymous characters, constitutes an experience that is not communicable. It speaks mainly about the relationship between the majority and minority. We therefore believe that darkness has the same political potential as light. It is obvious that this environment is based on the same hieratic, normative and traumatic principles as the ordinary public space.
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