Δ IMAG[IN]ING MUSICAL INDONESIA

30th September – 15th November 2015

Paying homage to Indonesia as the guest of honour at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, the Weltkulturen Museum’s exhibition in the Green Room, IMAG[IN]ING MUSICAL INDONESIA, traces the history of the diverse and contrasting musical landscape in Indonesia with examples of instruments, dance and performance.

With 17,058 Indonesian islands it's truly difficult to gain an overall impression of its music. In the past, European and Islamic influences, as well as regional re-interpretations and re-contextualizations of classical Indonesian instruments, have all contributed to the emergence of many new and diverse genres of Indonesian music. The exhibition addresses this complex topic by sampling various sources, such as photographies, films, literature and selected objects. The Weltkulturen Museum’s extensive collection of historical images provides visual inspiration for this journey.

A studio equipped with literature, films, an audio station and instruments invites visitors for hands-on experiences.

Our thanks to GUDE and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings for their support.

Green Room, Weltkulturen Labor
Schaumainkai  37, 60594 Frankfurt
Tues – Sun, 11am – 6pm, Wed, 11am – 8pm
€3 / reduced €1.50

schließen

Δ EL HADJI SY: PAINTING, PERFORMANCE, POLITICS

5th March 2015 – 18th October 2015

In the mid-1970s, in a pioneering move, the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt began collecting contemporary artworks from Africa. Today it has over 3000 paintings, prints and sculptures in its collection.

In 1985, the museum commissioned the artist and curator El Hadji Sy (born 1954 in Dakar) with the task of assembling a new group of works of contemporary art from Senegal, thereby initiating a long-term relationship between Frankfurt and Dakar.

Thirty years later, as part of its programmatic investigation into its collection, the Weltkulturen Museum is proud to present a retrospective of El Hadji Sy’s career as a painter and cultural activist whose seminal involvement with the museum preceded the so-called global turn of 1989.

The exhibition, which is co-curated by Philippe Pirotte, director of the Städelschule and Portikus, combines El Hadji Sy’s installations and paintings – sometimes executed with his bare feet or produced on unusual surfaces such as industrial rice sacking or synthetic kite silk – with his selection of ethnographic objects and artworks by colleagues from Senegal. The exhibition includes loans from international private collections in addition to works from the Weltkulturen Museum.

As a founder of the notorious collective Laboratoire AGIT’ART, and a curator of numerous artist-led workshops and studio spaces in Dakar, El Hadji Sy’s interdisciplinary practice represents a ground-breaking position within the context of post-independence Africa.

A comprehensive monograph with unseen archival material, essays and interviews by Hans Belting, Clémentine Deliss, Mamadou Diouf, Julia Grosse, Yvette Mutumba, Philippe Pirotte and Manon Schwich is published by diaphanes in English and German.

In 2016 the exhibition will be on display at the National Galery Prag (Národní galerie v Praze) and at Castle Ujazdowski, Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw (Centrum Sztuki Wspólczesnej Zamek Ujazdowskizu).

Weltkulturen Museum
Schaumainkai 29
60594 Frankfurt

Tues – Sun, 11am – 6pm, Wed, 11am – 8pm
Entrance: €7 / reduced €3.50

schließen