Date & Location
At the SomoS in Berlin, Germany, 18.09 - 10.10
At the SomoS in Berlin, Germany, 18.09 - 10.10
With imagination and fiction as tools, the Futureless group exhibition presents the myriad possibilities of queer/feminist futures within our increasingly digitized and ecologically precarious planet. Curated by Oliver Dougherty.
A generation of artists is emerging who view the dreams of economic progress and unlimited growth at their end. Simultaneously, we are witnessing the extent of humanity's damage to the globe becoming exposed. The loss of a future once thought by some as great and bright leaves us in a futureless state. Such a state may feel at once empty and ominous, yet also appear as a promising site for speculative fiction and fantasy. From an insightful standpoint, queer/feminist voices articulately shine through this futureless void, offering visions of how society can be continuously shaped and reshaped differently. What does it mean for queer/feminist thought and art that the future is missing? How can we dream of and interpret the present as seen from the future?
The artists participating in the Futureless group exhibition speculate on these questions and more, recognizing an important history of queer/feminist futurism. Drawing from this historical sensitivity, Futureless understands queer/feminist lives as existing within an ecosystem; in a constant exchange with the rest of nature and society that renders them as interdependent. In this way, various worlds, or perhaps universes, emerge from the artworks, performances, workshops, and lectures that are presented during Futureless, worlds that detail imaginative proposals for queer/feminist futures, with fiction and reality appearing in unentanglable forms. Standing before a backdrop formed by the ever-shifting relations between human beings and the globe, Futureless looks forward, viewing the emerging political and ideological void as an opportunity to envision queer/feminist dreams of future life.
Premiering during Futureless, the Constitution of the Autonomous Republic Xena-Maria is an ongoing series of watercolor paintings on original migration documents collected over the past seven years by Kulikovska from various countries. The documents detail the artist's bureaucratic trail of migration; applying for visas, residence permits, registration as an IDP from Crimea after its annexation as well as multiple refusal letters. The works are part of the research process for a fictional book currently being written by Kulikovska on her alter-ego "Xena from the forbidden land." For the artist, her home in the occupied Crimea represents a forbidden land, unenterable because of military repression and socially-constructed borders. By imaginatively using the very documents that represent her marginalization as an IDP (internally displaced person) as source material, Kulikovska searches beyond these forms of state oppression. She contemplates her own future as an exiled feminist artist, while asking the viewer to reflect on how borders, conflict, and the nation-state are affecting women worldwide, and whether they may be one day abolished.
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