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8/12/2008

Chosen

Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk

A project curated by Galit Eilat & Aneta Szylak

A joint collaboration between Wyspa Institute of Art and The Israeli Center for Digital Art.

Marxism, Nihilism, Communism, Socialism and Nazism are all ideologies shaped in modern times, functioning as secular counterparts to religious tenets. In the core of these ideologies is the secular-messianic desire of modern humans who pretend to have shaped this world and the next with their own hands. Modern revolutionary ideologies, Zionism among them, translated old religious longings into secular and political terms; religion was secularized, and turned into History - heavenly kingship became human kingship. However, authors such as Agata Bielik-Robson argue that hopes attached to the visions of the Messiah are disconnected from the utopian model of order; they stay on the side of an archaic, subversive position of mining the prevailing social order.

The project includes works by Yossi Atia & Itamar Rose, Yael Bartana, Grzegorz Klaman, Tomasz Kozak, Avi Mograbi, Ittai Meyer & Suff Backaleinick, Anna Molska, Anna Niesterowicz & Lukasz Gutt, Joanna Rajkowska, Roee Rosen, Menachem Roth & Yekutiel Roth, Sala-Manca, Twozywo and Artur Zmijewski, with the intention to investigate the paths in which national and other communal narratives of today remain affected by philosophical, literary and ideological Messianism. To "renew the meaning," using the words of Maria Janion, of this historically and philosophically loaded term and cultural phenomenon of seeing oneself as "chosen" to fulfill a particular mission, comes either from the supreme order, an ideological belief or just a common sense of responsibility. What interests us is how contemporary visual art carries out and reflects upon the visions of people, nation and country as the trustees of a particular mission of liberation, salvation and self-empowerment, and to see the cultural plots interwoven in the particular vision of individual, the hero, the martyr, the prophet and finally, politician, artist and intellectual.

The project is a collective response to notions of Messianism – either religious, secular, false or national. It addresses its various manifestations not solely within its Judeo-Christian context, but also in today politics, society and culture. The works presented in this exhibition examine the different expressions of "contemporary" Messianism, marked by its dynamism and its constant transformation. Thus, the politicisation of theology, a hallmark of Modernism, is replaced with a process of theologising the political, and this process is expressed in the politics of religion and fundamentalism.

The exhibition presented earlier this year in Holon has now come to Gdansk. It is dynamically structured so that some of the works have undergone change or are being replaced by new productions. Within the time frame of the exhibition, experts such as Agata Bielik-Robson, Yoav Kenny, Adam Lipszyc ,Roee Rosen and, Monika Rudas-Grodzka are invited to talk about Messianism in both Israeli and Polish narratives.

After the exhibition in Gdansk, an anthology summarizing this chapter dedicated to Messianism will be published first in English, then in Polish and Hebrew.

The exhibition is financed by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw from the means of Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in the framework of the Polish-Israeli Cultural Year. Additional funding has been provided by the City of Gdansk and the Embassy of Israel in Warsaw.

Opening reception December 9, 2008 at 7 pm
Conference December 10, 2008 at 11 am

Wyspa Institute of Art
Ul. Doki 1, Building 145B - Gdansk

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