Currently closed for install – opening on July 08, 6 pm

Nature and State

July 09 – October 16, 2022

Opening: Friday, July 08, 2022, 6 pm

Opening weekend: July 08-10, 2022

with performances by Grada Kilomba, Ersan Mondtag and artist talks

From July 09, 2022, as a continuation of State and Nature, last year’s major exhibition, the survey show Nature and State will be presented at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. It will focus on the investigation of continuity, disobedience and possible forms of transformation in relation to the state of statelessness, as well as the genealogical relationships between the future and the past.

Thus, this new chapter peacefully departs from a quote by Ursula K. Le Guin: “… we have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars.” (The Dispossessed, 1974)

Parallel to the recent revelations about humanity’s roots in David Graeber and David Wengrow‘s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), the focus shifts to questioning the main idea of the state as denial of the state of nature by considering how prehistoric communities histori cally made their own conscious decisions of how to live. The exhibition methodology continues the strategy of the first chapter, State & Nature, with events and installations in transition rather than static forms of exhibition-making.

On the occasion of the opening weekend, performances by Grada Kilomba and Ersan Mondtag will take place as well as several artist talks.

With works by Michael Akstaller, Cansu Çakar, Olga Chernysheva, Ipek Duben, Will Fredo, Nicole L’Huillier, Kavachi, Grada Kilomba, Robert Lippok, Constanza Macras, Silvina Der Meguerditchian, Hani Mojtahedy, Ersan Mondtag, Manuel Rossner, Christoph Schäfer, Muhannad Shono, Sorawit Songsataya, Ayman Zedani, a.o.