CURRENT EXHIBITION :::: Wherever We Go: Art, Identity, Cultures in Transit

Opening Receptions:
May 10, 2007 5:30 - 7:30pm (Phase I)

Exhibition Dates: May 11 — July 17, 2007
Co-curated by Hou Hanru & Gabi Scardi

The exhibition Wherever We Go: Art, Identity, Cultures in Transit, co-curated by Hou Hanru and Gabi Scardi, was inaugurated on Tuesday, October 17, 2006, at the Spazio Oberdan in Milan. Promoted by the Province of Milan and staged in collaboration with the Museo della Fotografia Contemporanea, the exhibition comprises fifty works by twenty-two artists.

Of different origins, from Albania to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the artists taking part in Wherever We Go have in common the fact of living in countries different from the ones in which they were born and of having encountered firsthand a variety of values and visions of the world. Hence they are representatives of a multifaceted culture that integrates multiple points of view. These are precisely the kind of people who are infusing art with new creative energies today, in a process of comparison and exchange, of transfers and influences.

Thus the artists' works reflect the intercultural tendency that characterizes much of present-day society and contemporary art, exploring the themes of displacement and cultural stratification, representation and the idea of culture as a sphere with a life of its own, capable of assimilating and continually integrating new and foreign elements.

Therefore, Wherever We Go speaks of identity, understanding by this term something that is defined not solely on the basis of geographical roots but but also and above all as the product of experiences and relationships; something that is not fixed once and for all, but is living and mutable, resisting simplifications and classifications.

The exhibition constitutes an open field of comparison and a mise-en-scène of crucial questions of the present; each work, fruit of a reflection-action, recounts things about the place in which its author was born, but also about where he or she now lives.

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ARTISTS :::
Adel Abdessemed, Yael Bartana, Banu Cennetoglu, Latifa Echakhch, Ni Haifeng, Mella Jaarsma, Koo Jeong-A, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Adrian Paci, Nari Ward, Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan.

Wherever We Go has received addition support from Deitch Projects (New York) and Paule Anglim.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with critical essays by the two curators and by Elvan Zabunyan, Gilane Tawadros, and Pier Luigi Tazzi, along with color photographs and biographies of the artists.

To purchase the exhibition catalog, click here