Natalia Sielewicz

Alison M. Gingeras

A look at the dark, symbolic work of Polish painter Aleksandra Waliszewska alongside historical artworks that influence her. Painter Aleksandra Waliszewska creates densely narrative, art historically saturated oil and gouache paintings. Waliszewska's pictorial universe is populated by supernatural characters and dark themes: devils, vampires, satanic creatures, possessed girls, apocalyptic scenes, bloodthirsty zombies, and other incarnations of the living dead. These characters are situated in dystopian urban landscapes, lost highways, deserted suburbs, gloomy housing estates, swamps, and other sites associated with the Eastern European landscape. Drawing from the specifically Slavic histories of the Upiór (the living dead), Waliszewska claims her artistic and conceptual descendance from premodern art and Symbolist works of the late 19th and early 20th century from Nordic, Baltic, and Eastern European regions. The Dark Arts presents a dense visual narrative, reproducing over a hundred images of Waliszewska's in juxtaposition with dozens of historical paintings and sculptures. Shifting away from the dominant figures of French and Austrian artists, this revisionist look at Symbolism through an Eastern and Baltic lens will introduce a wider audience to a rich and relatively understudied field of visual culture.

Aleksandra Waliszewska and Symbolism

The Dark Arts

Marta Dziewanska

Kathleen Bühler

Éric de Chassey

Paul B. Preciado

Élisabeth Lebovici

Adam Szymczyk

Fernando López Garcia

Anna Ara

Rita Segato

Jakub Momro

A rebel and feminist, the Switzerland-born Miriam Cahn is one of the major artists of her generation. Widely known for her drawings and paintings, she also experiments with photography, moving images, sculptures, and performance art. Cahn’s diverse body of work is disturbing and dreamlike, filled with striking human figures pulsing with an energy both passionate and violent. These pieces, along with Cahn’s reflections on artistic expression, have always responded to her contemporary moment. In the 1980s, her work addressed the feminist, peace, and environmental movements, while the work she produced in the 1990s and early 2000s contains allusions to the war in the former Yugoslavia, the conflict in the Middle East, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Her recent production tackles ever-evolving political conflicts, engaging with the European refugee crisis and the “#metoo” movement. Miriam Cahn: I as Human examines different facets of the artist’s prolific and troubling oeuvre, featuring contributions from art historians, critics, and philosophers including Kathleen Bühler, Paul B. Preciado, Elisabeth Lebovici, Adam Szymczyk, Natalia Sielewicz and .

I AS HUMAN

MIRIAM CAHN

From the editor?s introduction: ??MIRIAM CAHN: I AS HUMAN? looks at this oeuvre from several vantage points. Kathleen Bühler and Adam Szymczyk view it from the biographical perspective, as we are all entangled?consciously or not?in various broader or narrower historical planes. Natalia Sielewicz, while reading the images and looking at the texts, attentively observes the strategies and stakes of the works of an artist: a woman who in her art ruptures the notions of stable subjectivity, who inhabits the shifting perspectives of ?I?. Based on her research on patriarchal violence, anthropologist and feminist Rita Segato looks at wounded women?s bodies in Cahn?s oeuvre and invites us to rethink the idea of minoritarian politics. Jakub Momro movingly writes about the shock of an encounter, seeing as experience, image-thought, and Cahn?s work in the context of the intensities that create it/that it creates. Éric de Chassey, on the other hand, writes about the tension between figuration and abstraction: the mixture of distance, immediacy and truth; about performativity; and about the deeply political dimension of Cahn?s work. The artist herself comments on these issues with eloquence and conviction in a conversation with Patricia Falguières, Élisabeth Lebovici, and Natasa Petresin-Bachelez [?].?00Exhibition: Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (22.02. - 16.06.2019) / Haus der Kunst, München, Germany (12.07.- 27.10.2019) / Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland (29.11.2019 - 23.02.2020).

I as Human

Miriam Cahn

Natalia Sielewicz

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