Δ Bali in the Focus of the Camera. Even before the First World War, Europeans partially introduced the romantic cliché of a heavenly life in Bali through a wave of illustrated books, travel stories, and films. The 112 pictures of the exhibition deliberately focus our attention on the photographs taken by photographers born and living in Bali rather than those taken by Western photographers. In the course of the approximately 80 years their work encompasses, the photographers Auw Kok Heng (1913-1967), his son Karyadinata Sudjana (born 1942) and Ida Bagus Putra Aduyana (born 1958), representing three generations, have experimented and worked with very different camera types and varied photographic media. Their photographic work certainly represents the style of the artists' times and meets the expectations of their respective generation. At the same time, it speaks to the individual expression each artist developed through his photography.



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Δ The Look into ones one’s Face

The Western image of Tibet is often one-sided and imbued with clichés which are either about Chinese repression or the myth of the legendary “Shangrila”. The fact that Tibet is a complex modern society is far more rarely perceived. In 2009, Lhasa, the capital, is a mixture of Chinese small-town streets lined with billboard-decorated concrete buildings and an ancient Tibetan city centre with gold-gleaming temple roofs. Lhasa is a meeting point for pilgrims from all directions and, at the same time, a garrison town and a commercial centre.

In the last years, in spite of all restrictions, a vibrant art scene has established itself. Its development is thriving on far-reaching changes within the subjugated Tibetan society – on a thin dividing line between post-communist movements, global internet culture and Buddhism. A handful of young artists, among them Chinese colleagues living in Tibet for a long time, have founded a gallery in the heart of the old town. It bears the name of Gendün Chöpel, the first modern artist and scientist who is an icon of the secular freethinking people of Tibet.

For the first time, photo documents from eleven artists of the Gendün Chöpel Gallery are to be seen in a Western country. These allow some very personal insights into the Tibetan everyday life between tradition, repression and the debate over a modern Tibetan identity. The title of the exhibition – “The look into one’s own face” – has been chosen by the photographers themselves because it is an old Tibetan phrase. In Buddhism it means the moment when a man or a woman reaches a fundamental knowledge of his or her own being unhampered by prejudice – that is when s/he is “enlightened”.

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Δ Travelling and Discovering.

The exhibition Travelling and discovering: from the Sepik to the Main puts 124 objects taken from the internationally renowned Oceania Collection of the Museum of World Cultures on show. At the beginning of the 1960s these had been acquired in Papua New Guinea by scientists of the Frobenius Institute for the Frankfort Ethnological Museum. During two research expeditions heading for the Sepik River area in the north eastern part of the island they collected carved ancestor figures, debating stools, paintings on palm leaf sheaths and “sacred flutes” – counted today among the highlights of the museum. In Frankfort these have been exhibited only twice in the past: in 1964 in the Städel’sches Kunstinstitut and in 1987 in the Kunsthalle Schirn.

Visitors are invited to enter the flow of time and undertake a journey in the company of the exhibits. We’ll start on the Sepik River at the beginning of the 1960s to gain a view into male and female spheres of life and an understanding of the institution of the men’s house. Continuing our way we will gain impressions of the collecting activities of the researchers in the field. A series of photos will introduce us to the transport of the collection from the Sepik River to the Main.

As an exemplary mode of the presentation of ethnographic objects in a museum the style of the 1960s is reconstructed: considered as scientific evidence objects are staged in the form of dioramas with photos and text panels. At the end of the journey all objects have become ‘pure’ works of art and have arrived in the gallery of the present.

In a replicated museum’s storeroom visitors will have the opportunity to get more information on the exhibits. An explorer’s handbook will help children to find the way to their own research station where they can touch things themselves.

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