The ifa Galleries in Berlin and Stuttgart kick off their annual exhibition programmes.
In Berlin, 15 February will be the opening of the exhibition School of Casablanca. The collaborative project, initiated in 2020 along with the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), ThinkArt (Casablanca) and others, sheds light on a critical turning point in Moroccan art history following the country’s independence in 1956. It references the modern approaches and ideas of the Casablanca Art School during this period. School of Casablanca presents a dialogue between contemporary artistic positions and archive material.
From 6 June onwards, in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), the ifa Gallery Berlin will present a solo exhibition by Joël Andrianomearisoa, the first artist to exhibit at the Madagascar Pavilion as part of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.
Until 25 February, the ifa Gallery Stuttgart will be showing the exhibition Resonaciones. Un abrazo para despertar / An Embrace to Awake, in which Nicole L’Huillier – one of the artists contributing to the German Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale – and Francisca Gili awaken millennia-old whistling vessels from the Andean Moche culture and, with the aid of AI, merge them with sounds from today. The project seeks to stimulate new questions regarding the colonial past, present and future. Within the context of the project, on 9 February there will be a Listening Session with Nicole L'Huillier and a lecture on decolonial artistic practice by Rolando Vázquez.
The first opening of the year at the ifa Gallery Stuttgart will be of the group exhibition Traces of Interest on 13 March. The exhibition continues the artistic and curatorial exploration of the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen’s art collection and will be on view until 9 June.
School of Casablanca
16 February – 12 May 2024
Opening: Thursday, 15 February 2024
Artist Talk: Friday, 16 February 2024, 16.00
ifa Gallery Berlin
School of Casablanca draws on the legacy of the Casablanca Art School and its innovative pedagogical methods, modernist aesthetics, and exhibition strategies during the 1960s and highlights a pivotal moment in Moroccan art history following the country’s 1956 independence. During this period, Casablanca developed a completely fresh self-image and radically broke with tradition. The Casablanca Art School played a seminal role in these developments with its modern approaches, artistic ideas, and pedagogical methods. Partly drawing inspiration from Walter Gro-pius’s Bauhaus manifesto (1919), it grew into a groundbreaking forum. The collaborative initiative School of Casablanca revisits and reinterprets the ideas, traditions, and interrogations of the Casablanca Art School in light of contemporary thought. More
Resonaciones. Un abrazo para despertar/An Embrace to Awake
extended until 25 February 2024
ifa-Gallery Stuttgart
What happens when sounds from the past touch the present? This is the question that the ifa Gallery Stuttgart addresses in the Resonaciones project. For this presentation at ifa Gallery Stuttgart the two Chilean artists Nicole L'Huillier and Francisca Gili have reactivated whistling vessels from the Andean Moche culture held in the Stuttgart Linden Museum. Sound and music played an important role in Moche culture, and the two artists combine the centuries-old technology of whistling vessels from the Andes with today’s technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). The project wishes to provide an impulse to ask and reframe questions about the colonial past, the present and the future. More
Resonaciones is presented in cooperation with the Linden Museum Stuttgart and the 16 Bienal de Artes Mediales Santiago de Chile.
Traces of Interest
Out of the Box:
ifa-Kunstbestand / ifa art collection 3
14 March – 9 June 2024
Opening: Wednesday, 13 March 2024
ifa Gallery Stuttgart
Traces of Interest is the third part in the artistic and curatorial examination of the layered history of the ifa’s extensive art collection. The exhibition connects concepts and artworks from a creative process that began with the artists Isaac Chong Wai, Lizza May David, Wilhelm Klotzek, Ofri Lapid, Adrien Missika and Gitte Villesen in autumn 2021. The preceding two parts of the project, Spheres of Interest and Chains of Interest, saw artists contextualise and reflect on the collecting and exhibition practices of the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, enabling a new exploration of its historical German art collection.
With works by: Heinrich Apel, Joseph Beuys & Nicolás García Uriburu, Erich Bödeker, Isaac Chong Wai, Carlfriedrich Claus, Lizza May David, Dick Higgins, Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Joseph Kosuth, Wilhelm Klotzek, Ofri Lapid, Adrien Missika, Takako Saito, Eran Schaerf, Elisa Tan, Endre Tót, Rosemarie Trockel, Günther Uecker, Gitte Villesen, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt
Joël Andrianomearisoa
7 June – 1 September 2024
LULLABIES AND WHISPERS
Opening: Thursday, 6 June 2024
ifa Gallery Berlin
For his solo exhibition at the ifa Gallery Berlin, Joël Andrianomearisoa (born in 1997 in Madagascar, lives and works between Paris and Antananarivo) takes inspiration from a lullaby his Madagascan grandmother used to sing to him at bedtime. His childhood memory of this song, in which some words have potentially been forgotten, allows space for new French lyrics to be introduced. Andrianomearisoa conducts a poetic investigation that goes beyond language and captures the essence of the lullaby, from the feeling of intimacy and belonging they evoke to the healing power they possess. The exhibition will feature a site-specific installation and a video work commissioned by the ifa Gallery Berlin, while the lyrics of Andrianomearisoa’s lullaby will be translated into several languages – highlighting the universal character of the lullaby and their ability to connect beyond culture and language.
About the ifa Galleries
The ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Galleries in Stuttgart and Berlin present contemporary art in a global perspective, addressing post-colonial movements and artistic reflections on the themes of migration and cultural transfer. The work of the ifa Galleries is based on seeing the world from a diversity and plurality of perspectives, discovering new stories, and shaping emancipatory processes, interactions, and artistic spaces. Our focus is on long-term relationships with artists, partners, and visitors, and our exhibitions and education programmes are developed through practices of collaboration that trace global entanglements and piece them together in new forms of narrative. www.ifa.de
Press images are available on the press section of the ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen website.
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ifa – Institut für Auslandbeziehungen
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Alya Sebti and Inka Gressel
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Bettina Korintenberg
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Together with partners, ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen champions freedom in art, research and civil society worldwide, bringing together people who are committed to an open society. It creates analogue and digital spaces for encounter, exchange, negotiation and co-creation. ifa lends a voice to activists, artists, scholars and scientists, promotes cooperation and increasingly pursues its goals jointly with European partners. Using its core competencies in art, research and civil society, ifa builds networks to achieve sustainable results. It is supported by the Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the state of Baden-Württemberg and its capital Stuttgart.