• Sat 03 07 – Sun 12 12 2021 •
HANDS: AN ART CAMPAIGN

With HANDS: an art campaign, Academy of the Arts of the World launches more than an exhibition: it is an effort to bring tactility and interaction back to public life. Here art functions as a kind of incubator, healing social wounds and counteracting the feeling of isolation. Hands as overdetermined instruments of work take on a special role – as they are stigmatized in the midst of a pandemic as a possible source of contamination, threatening our concept of community. Since the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, our perception of hands has fundamentally changed; though with advancing digitalization, the significance of and appreciation for hands have already massively come into question – hands as tools and helpers, caregivers and providers, as signifier and gesture, these concepts are being challenged, and the value of handiwork and working hands is as well. The growing mistrust in hands that has resulted from the measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic could be the symbol of a new global system, a system in which bodies are categorized according to potential risk. This collective uncertainty around the tactile could affect our general perception of the way cultural activity functions in social life. The acceptance of emergency regulations and austerity carries the danger of relegating culture to the domain of redundancy and irrelevancy. Such a scenario could result in a social depression. This is where art must intervene, to restore the productivity and dignity of hands but also to imagine new pathways for tactile and interactive public culture. The challenge for artists in this moment is to create sustainably accessible artistic practices, to anchor artworks in everyday realities and to fully utilize their playful and therapeutic potential.

HANDS: an art campaign comprises the works exhibited at Academyspace by Cevdet Erek, Ali Eyal, Shilpa Gupta, Taus Makhacheva, Dhali Al Mamoon, •• PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT, Evariste Richer, Yazan Rousan and Antje Van Wichelen (with Maxime Gids). As part of the art campaign the artists also have made multiples of each object – sometimes identical to the exhibits or in sizes smaller than the mother objects, sometimes as fractions or as an essence of the exhibit. They are available for a standard affordable price, independent of production costs and name recognition of the artist. A video installation by co-curator Ala Younis and a tribute to Charlotte Posenenske (1930 – 1985) are also part of the exhibition. In addition, HANDS: an art campaign will include the workshops Tactile Sensibility by Kerstin Schroedinger and A Small World or a Place In-Between Us by Nicolás Paris, an Online Talk Matters of Tactility: Revisiting Charlotte Posenenske and exhibition tours with the curators.

For visitors 12 years and older applies: Please provide us with a vaccination certificate or a recovery certificate as well as an official, daily negative test (rapid or PCR test) at the time of your visit. Compliance with the general hygiene rules and the wearing of a medical mouth-nose protection is mandatory. We are looking forward to your visit!