TRAVEL / REISEN

Post date: Feb 15, 2013 10:54:42 AM

Group exhibition “TRAVEL / REISEN”, from 23. 2. until 15. 3. 2013, in artfoyer Cavigelli, Zürich, Switzerland

Artists: Nadja Athanasiou, Irina Birger, Andrea Gohl, Daniel Fernández Pascual, Delia Popa, Anka Schmid and Anca Sinpalean

Curated by Anca Sinpalean

Opening reception: 22. 02. 2013 from 7 pm

Related program: Screening of Magic Matterhorn by Anka Schmid, 1. 03. at 7 pm

“Being on the way” has become a way of living for many contemporary artists. Traveling between exhibitions, projects and residencies, as well as the immigration has influenced the methods and outcome of their work. The exhibition presents some of the forms and functions of artists’ travels today, while taking us on a virtual tour of the Swiss Alps, the American Disneyland, the Spanish Coast, the parks and markets of China or of Venice during the Carnival.

The exhibited works are results of architectural surveys, ironic comparisons of cultural stereotypes or of activism. They show the limitations of understanding other cultures while traveling or the illusory search for “home”; some challenge the conventions of touristic imagery by undermining them and by focusing on the banal or the ugly; some explore the political implications of a changing touristic landscape, like the Spanish Coast.

Travel, with all its forms, from strolling to immigration, used to hold the promise of the unexpected and the new. But for us, there are no dragons left on the edges of maps. Can artists still transform themselves into cartographers and map the world in new ways?