10 December 2016 – 5 March 2017

As told

Modern art used to insist on the difference between things seen and things told. The autonomy of the visual arts was seen as emanating from a profound understanding of silence, a resistance against sequenced narration and ultimately against its dependence on time. Contemporary art offers another perspective. Visuality has become part of a larger toolbox, with various modes of expression that include the spoken and written word.

Vävstolar framför ett stort textilstycke med text på.

Artists

Ana Gallardo, Tamar Guimarães och Kasper Akhøj, Emily Wardill. Every day we are fed stories, observations, confessions, statements, anecdotes. Some of these pass us by, while others may prove decisive for how we view the world.

Indeed, today’s artists often use language as a tool for analysing and transforming everyday stories. In this exhibition, Lunds konsthall presents works by four artists from different countries, born in different decades. What unites them is their interest in personal stories and in probing the distinction between reality and fiction.

Ana Gallardo has met elderly women from Latin America, now residing in Malmö and Lund, and listened to their stories of involuntary migration. She has also more spontaneously met women from the centers for elderly people run by the Municipality of Lund, who have as part of the artist’s work been invited to install a temporary center at Lund konsthall.

Tamar Guimarães scrutinises the inner workings of representation. Where does fiction begin? What can be said, about what, and when? We show a new piece where Guimarães explores this, as well as a co-production by Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj, a film demonstrating what history might look like when filtered through contemporary criticality.

Emily Wardill is interested in how differently we perceive and process actual events, but also how documentation may influence our understanding of reality. Her films demonstrate how efficiently the dream-like and the absurd may infiltrate the everyday.

A handful of works are presented in this exhibition, and it is no coincidence that they mostly rely on (and relay) stories told by women. They articulate views of reality that seldom reach a wider audience, thus challenging the traditionally male-dominated field of historiography.

Curators: Åsa Nacking, Debora Voges

Photographers: Emil Nilsson, Madeleine Malmsten