THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

13 MAY 

08 OCTOBER 2023
 

Hiba Alansari | Thuraya Al-Baqsami | Monira Al Qadiri | Rosa Barba | Alexandra Bircken | Monica Bonvicini | Leda Bourgogne | Kerstin Brätsch | Tania Bruguera | Ceal Floyer | Galli | Asta Gröting | Roey Victoria Heifetz | Almut Heise | Leila Hekmat | Leiko Ikemura | Anne Imhof | Annette Kelm | Conny Maier | Heidi Manthey | Beatriz Morales| Sara Nabil | Helga Paris | Adrian Piper | Lin May Saeed | Karin Sander | Julia Scher | Marianna Simnett | Sturtevant | Rosemarie Trockel | Patricia Waller


In chess there are no secrets, only undiscovered truths.

– Savielly Tartakower (1887–1956)


This is an exhibition of our time: Superman is thwarted and hits a wall, an oversized hybrid female hare offers motherly protection, a pair of seahorses switch traditional gender roles, and passion creates sparks. With a selection of contemporary works by thirty-one female artists of different generations and cultural influences, the exhibition at the Museum Frieder Burda presents exclusively female positions and their wide spectrum of themes.

Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) was an art collector, gallerist, and patron of the arts. The legendary American is considered a pioneer and supporter of international avant-garde artists ranging from Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp to Jackson Pollock. She, too, experienced her role as a woman in an expanding and male dominated art scene as ambivalent.

Exactly eighty years ago, Guggenheim presented in her visionary gallery Art of this Century in New York, the exhibition titled Exhibition by 31 Women, an early example of a show featuring women artists. Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), one of the key figures in twentieth-century art and a longtime friend of Guggenheim's, advised her on the show. Duchamp, who was also a passionate chess player, provided the title and concept for the exhibition. As is well known, the queen is the most powerful figure in chess, while the king has a limited radius of action and depends on the other figures for protection. Contemporary critics reacted with reluctant admiration and condescending disregard. The verdicts culminated in a review by James Stern, the art critic of the influential magazine TIME, who rejected the exhibition since he had never seen a “first-class woman artist.” How wrong could a critic be!

The conceptual foundation of this historic exhibition is now taken up by The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen, which will likewise present the work of thirty-one contemporary women artists who reflect on recent aesthetic, political and social transformations. These artists prove to be witnesses of their time which is always our time as well. The exhibition aims to allow the presented works to have their own voices, which are free and independent of the ideological debates that are so prevalent in the cultural environment.

Udo Kittelmann, the curator of the exhibition and artistic director of the museum, has invited artists who were decisive both for him, personally, in his extensive career and in their own context. The presentation unites works from various disciplines, including painting, sculpture, film, sound, and installation. The works contribute to the overall narrative staging of the exhibition while also remaining focused as distinctive individual voices. Kittelmann explains, “The exhibition gives the works a voice and believes in their power and meaning, allowing some of them to be loud and others to assert themselves subtly and quietly.”

Here, you can discover the strongest voices in contemporary female art. – Welt
Beyond all isms [...] the exhibition relies on the power of the works presented - and they are convincing. – Badische Neueste Nachrichten

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THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN Museum Frieder Burda Baden Baden
Here, you can discover the strongest voices in contemporary female art. – Welt


impressions

Exhibition Film


Podcast

The audio guide of the Transformers show delves into the experimental and animated nature of this radical exhibition. In four in-depth conversations, exhibition curator Udo Kittelmann investigates aspects and issues regarding artificial intelligence. These stimulating and inspiring conversations explore often surprising thoughts on “what if” scenarios in a radically changed future.
Louisa Clement (b. 1987 in Bonn, Germany) graduated from Düsseldorf art academy in 2015. Will machines become our doppelgangers? In this conversation, Udo Kittelmann and Louisa Clement speak about digital footprints, adaptive AI, digital networks, and isolation, sharing thoughts equally intriguing and disconcerting about three-dimensional likenesses.
Annemie Vanackere is a Belgian festival curator and theater director. Since 2012 she has been the director and CEO of the theater Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. In addition to discussing the impact that the technologization and digitization of our lives has on the performing arts, Kittelmann and Vanackere talk about multiple intelligences and empathy.
Dr. Clara Meister is an international curator. Her curatorial work focuses on topics of translation, language, and music. In this conversation, Udo Kittelmann and Clara Meister explore the relationship between technology and nature, questioning technological progress and advocating more space for plant and other nonhuman intelligences in handling technological progress.
“Why are humans not content with themselves?” Alice Lagaay is a philosopher who is actively involved in developing performance as an interdisciplinary field of research. In this conversation on Jordan Wolfson’s animatronic sculpture Female Figure, Kittelmann and Lagaay discuss issues such as technological self-manipulation, the alluring and overwhelming qualities of machines, and the misogynistic aspects of the work.



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