mumok perspectives: Avant-Garde and Liberation

Accompanying the Avant-Garde and Liberation exhibition, mumok Perspectives is a new, participatory digital program that expands scope for communication in the polyphonic practice of art education.

The exhibition per se sheds light on the significance of global modernism for contemporary art and offers in-depth insights into decolonial avant-gardes. The artworks shown respond to historical developments around the globe and react to current omnipresent threats of racist violence, nationalist politics, and neo-colonial economies by invoking the achievements and concepts of artistic modernism. They are vibrant, diverse, and a unique mode of communication in their own right.

Moving away from art education that mediates between visitors and the works, mumok Perspectives offers you a range of voices. As lively and diverse as the artworks, recorded voices, audible through your earphones, accompany you on your own private stroll through the exhibition. Never intended as reference-bound explanations, these voices are designed to deepen your engagement with the exhibition’s content on a human level, without ever being intrusive.

Exhibition spaces are places for social interactions that should never be dominated by one single point of view. Far removed from the artificial dichotomy of explaining and understanding, the idea is that you will come into contact with new friends through the artworks rather than being alone as a visitor. Aurally and visually, our strong cooperation partners expand our perspectives on the living history inherent in each work.
 

Acting as a vibrant location for encounters and exchanges in public space numbers among mumok’s central aspirations. For the museum, the Avant-Garde and Liberation exhibition represents a dynamic departure from classical viewpoints, ensuring that art, history, and the present enter into dialog with each other and with visitors. The program accompanying the exhibition also includes a generously proportioned reading area in which the network of references can be explored through reading.

In addition, we offer the Queer Feminist Viewpoints tour format. The Feminist Viewpoints guided tour in the Avant-Garde and Liberation exhibition takes as its point of departure Black artist Cauleen Smith’s statement I am interested in how we relate to one another in the world that we’re in – that’s what culture is and her film Sojourner. Through their artworks in this exhibition, artists Janine Jembere, Robert Gabris, patricia kaersenhout and Maud Sulter open up spaces for negotiating, becoming acquainted, and discussion. The associated exhibition tour offers entry points and connections for personal reflection and intriguing conversations.

In addition to the themed tours, mumok offers a variety of other tours that provide deeper insights into the exhibition. The curator-led tours deserve a particular mention and engage intensively with global modernism‘s significance for contemporary art. These tours are designed to address the political circumstances that led contemporary artists to draw on non-European avant-gardes that set themselves in opposition to dominant Western modernism from the nineteen-twenties to the nineteen-seventies.

In addition, overview tours of the exhibition are organized every Sunday. These tours offer visitors the opportunity to discover the central themes and most significant exhibits in the exhibition. They are particularly aimed at visitors looking for a comprehensive introduction to global modernism’s complex interlinkages and its influence on contemporary art.

Exhibitions are more than just presentations of artworks; they are living narratives that reflect historical struggles and their artistic forms of expression, while at the same time allowing visitors to look towards better possible futures. The accompanying digital program seeks to highlight these stories. Art is first and foremost a form of communication that makes us aware of living history, without ever being confined to just one point of view.

Discover new perspectives with us!