Artur Żmijewski
Plan B
In Between
Installation, Photographs
Artur Żmijewski, Plan B, 2019, installation, Girardigasse 8, Graz, photo: Mathias Völzke
Artur Żmijewski, In Between, 2018, photographs, installation view, Palais Attems, Graz, photo: Liz Eve
Dates
20.9.–13.10.2019
Location
Girardigasse 8 & Palais Attems
Graz
Production specifics
Plan B
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’19
In Between
Loan courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich
Plan B
Artur Żmijewski’s installation for steirischer herbst ’19 gives expression to the desire to run for shelter from today’s atmosphere of impending political catastrophe. Reacting to the increasingly nationalist developments in Eastern and Central Europe, Żmijewski imagines a hiding place in a disused shop location in Graz. Inspired by prepper projects and walking-dead scenarios as much as by bunkers and the attics used for concealing persecuted groups in World War II, Żmijewski’s installation might be the perfect place for artists to survive their immanent persecution, as right-wing populists set their sights on artistic institutions and their agents. Or seen in a more optimistic light, it could be a hideout for a disgraced right-wing politician trying to get away from it all. Either way, Żmijewski explores his fascination for personal escape capsules and insular, camouflaged worlds to which one might retreat in troubled times.
In Between
Artur Żmijewski’s black-and-white portraits of non-European migrants were made just as a new wave of racism and xenophobia was sweeping the cities of Europe. They reenact one of the most violent episodes in the history of photography, when portraits with measuring devices such as rulers and calipers were used as tools of discrimination. Anthropometry not only served to identify racial traits but also typically criminal physiognomies. Features such as skull circumference or nose length were thus used to legitimate the natural superiority of one race over another, or to find examples that were “degenerate” or “impure,” to use the language of that time. Such pseudoscientific findings were deployed to provide a biological excuse for genocide and colonial violence. Żmijewski’s gritty photographs remind us of such outcomes, pointing toward today’s renewed exclusions and reminding us how 19th-century anthropometry lives on in today’s biometric passports and retina scanners.
Retrospective
Retrospective