When I first joined this program abroad, I was not sure exactly what I wanted to get out of it. I had vague notions: I want to gain inspiration for music, I want to learn about the relationship between art and religion, I want to better understand World War 2, I want to get a…
Work at Venice Biennale
At the Venice Biennale, people can find the South African pavilion. The pavilion contains works by two artists: Mohau Modisakeng and Candice Breitz. Candice Breitz’s Love Story is a two room video installation that is centered around refugee stories. Candice Breitz recorded interviews with refugees, collecting several interviews that were each several hours in length….
Tourism in Germany and Venice: Historical Presence and Absence
Staying in Cologne, Germany has been very different from my time spent in Venice, Italy. While Venice in July assailed its tourist with sweltering temperatures and stifling humidity, early August in Cologne has been consistently cloudy, cool, and rainy. Venice was crowded with tourists at any hour of the day, and Cologne (without the international…
‘Another Cultural Exhibition’: National Socialist Documentation Centre
When I first arrived to Europe, understanding more about World War Two, nazism, and the rise of hitler was one of my main priorities. I’ve learned a substantial amount in my own time, googling and what not, but I knew that learning from primary documents, and visiting historical areas would be powerful and informative experiences….
Chinese Pavilion, PART II, The Failure of Ideal & National Representation of Exoticism
A hail to the art world, and the return to aesthetics, this year’s Venice Biennale by Christine Macel is often considered as a failure of not noticing the politically chaotic real world. However, to me, the reason why I found Macel’s central pavilion unsatisfying is not because of the claim she would like to advocate,…
Art Tourism: A Search for Authenticity?
This past Winter, I participated in a Women’s and Gender Studies and History OCS program to India. While those two subject matters were our primary focus, we also took a class on tourism, more specifically about tourism in the Third World. We discussed the subjective nature of the “tourist gaze,” and the performativity involved in…
Cultural Distance and Art Tourism
We have all, at one time or another, made a journey to see a work of art. I have traveled to Illinois to visit the Art Institute, many of my class mates drove to Ghent to see the Ghent Altarpiece, and thousands of tourists from all over the world (including those on this program) have…
The Traveling for the Experience
Traveling the world for art is by no means an all-inclusive notion. It plays into notions of capitalism and can undermine the audiences experience of large exhibitions like Kassel’s Documenta as art critics often rush through the exhibition and are unable to see all of the exhibition. Although I generally disagree with traveling for the…
Provenance at documenta
Within the art world, especially museums, the topic of provenance has come to the forefront and has been the source of significant controversy. In part, this is due to the fact that museums in particular can have very dark pasts. Art that was stolen from Jewish owners prior to and during World War Two currently…
From Germany to America: How to Remember a Shameful Past
To say the least, it’s been a very weird past week. In the midst of Skulptur Projekte, I’ve been distracted by reports, articles, posts, and footage about the events in Charlottesville. Being so far away, I’ve felt weirdly separated from the events and have few answers for Germans who ask me about the events. As…