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Gropiusbau: YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal | 16.09.2022-15.01.2023

Editors’ Choice

The Gropius Bau presents the exhibition YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal (YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal), which is the culmination of many years of research by a multi-voiced team of international artists, curators and scientists.

Image above: Tabita Rezaire & Amakaba, Singing Bee Garden, 2021. videostill Courtesy: Tabita Rezaire & Amakaba.

YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal brings together the diverse, sometimes contradictory perspectives of 26 artists* to address thematic areas such as the politicisation of health, the resilience of Indigenous knowledge systems, forms of (elective) kinship, equitable land use and distribution, decolonisation and the rights of the non-human, all of which are interwoven with different concepts of care, repair and healing. The relevance of these issues has become increasingly evident in recent years with the intensification of climate emergency, global pandemics, political instability and the rise of authoritarian and populist regimes.

YOYI is the name of a ceremonial gathering of song and dance that is central to the Tiwi culture of northern Australia. YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal refers to this exclamation: an invitation to come together to celebrate and mourn. Gestures, shouts, ceremonial objects and body painting are also part of the vibrant and creative practice of YOYI. In response to this call, each of the 26 invited artists pursue different strategies of questioning, reinventing, expanding, sustaining or renouncing notions of care, repair and healing. Some open critical perspectives on how the concept of care has been misused. Others propose methods of repair that are fundamentally different from Western approaches. Still others question whether healing is possible or even necessary. The spectrum of these voices is echoed in video works, installations, paintings and performances on display throughout the ground floor of the Gropius Bau.

With an experimental, democratic approach, the curatorial team, whose members hail from Europe, Asia and Australia, engages with the many understandings of care, repair and healing that have emerged from mutual exchange.

With works by Pierre Adler, Brook Andrew, Kader Attia, Tosh Basco, Mohamed Bourouissa, Andrea Büttner, Lavkant Chaudhary, Lygia Clark, André Eugène, Guyodo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Johanna Hedva, Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Eva Koťátková, Betty Muffler & Maringka Burton, Grace Ndiritu, People’s Archive of Rural India, Outi Pieski, Paula Rego, Tabita Rezaire & Amakaba, Georgia Sagri, Yhonnie Scarce, Reginald Sénatus (Redji), SERAFINE1369 and Wu Tsang.

DEEDS NEWS - YOYI! - The Grindmill Songs Project
People’s Archive of Rural India, The Grindrill Songs Project, 2020-present. Installation view (detail). © People’s Archive of Rural India

The exhibition continues the Gropius Bau’s programme under the direction of Stephanie Rosenthal, which was initiated with her appointment as director in 2018. Recent exhibitions and projects include Wu Tsang: There is no nonviolent way to look at somebody (2019), Rituals of Care (2020), Lee Mingwei: 禮 Li, Gifts and Rituals (2020), Otobong Nkanga: There’s No Such Thing as Solid Ground (2020) and Ámà: 4 Days to Care, Repair and Healing (2021).

“Under my leadership, the Gropius Bau built on its heritage as a historic exhibition space and opened up to a range of contemporary voices and positions that think critically about issues of space and embodiment, architecture and its history, and the pressing issues of care, repair and healing. For this exhibition, I invited artists and curators to work as a team, bringing their own interests and perspectives to the table. We chose this form of collaboration because it was important to us to look at the issues from a variety of angles – not from a purely Western perspective. But that is only possible if different points of view are actually represented. I am pleased that we have realised this exhibition with first-class co-curators and artists and that we have brought together central issues of the programme.”
—Stephanie Rosenthal, Director of the Gropius Bau

Kader Attia is involved in the exhibition as curator and artist. His longstanding research and art practice revolves around the idea of repair and the far-reaching effects of the cultural hegemony of the West and colonialism. He curated the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art 2022. “While modernism claims to erase injuries forever, pre-modernism – encompassing cultures from every continent – has always left room for injuries even after the repair process. In pre-modernity, repaired objects have always embodied the new life of the object as a continuity of the state before the breach. The denial of wounds is not an innocent endeavour. It pursues a goal metaphorically present in the erasure of colonial crimes.”
—Kader Attia, co-curator and artist

Brook Andrew, another co-curator of the exhibition, is an Australian artist, curator and researcher who belongs to the Wiradjuri. In his work, he creates alternative visions of the future that question ongoing colonial practices and foreground Indigenous ways of life. “In an increasingly global world where colonial reparations and ‘decolonisation’ motivate a movement towards a ‘better’ world of care and reciprocity, the exhibition is an experiment in how ‘we’ can possibly bring about healing and a balanced position.”
— Brook Andrew, co-curator and artist

Natasha Ginwala is Associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau and was already involved in the research for the exhibition. As co-curator of the 13th Gwangju Biennale 2021, she focused on matriarchal approaches to the recovery of traditional knowledge. “This exhibition shows how history is carried in the body and what it means to live with injuries, social vulnerability and illness. The positions I invited come from rural and Indigenous contexts and address processes of restoration and recovery, the preservation of communal experiences through song, land rights, and the making of kinship to more-than-human ways of living.”
—Natasha Ginwala, Associate Curator at Large at the Gropius Bau

DEEDS NEWS - Mohamed Bourouissa - The Whispering of Gosts
Mohamed Bourouissa, The Whispering of Ghosts (still), 2018. The film was commissioned by FACT and Liverpool Biennial. © ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa, Courtesy: the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/ London

Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz is another co-curator of the exhibition. She is director of exhibitions and collections at Centro Botín in Santander and co-editor of Documents of Contemporary Art: Health (2020, Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press). Health has also been central to her work while curating the Wellcome Collection in London. “I am interested in the politics of health and care and the intersection of social and environmental justice. The artists I invited activate historical collections that deal with health, the body, astrology, botany and witchcraft. They expose colonial collection practices or show the ways in which indigenous, scientific and spiritual knowledge is passed down through generations.”
— Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, Co-curator

Programm
Expanding on the exhibition, the Breathe discourse programme asks how gender, race, geography and economics fundamentally affect our ability to breathe. It is an invitation to scholars, activists and artists from Berlin and beyond to share their thoughts, experiences and ideas in talks, lectures and workshops. Guests include Imeh Ituen, Michael Turner, Deborah Willis, Dmitry Paranyushkin and Hadija Haruna-Oelker.

A space for discourse and reflection is offered by the Resonance Room, which brings together local knowledge and experience on the topic of mental health. As a place of encounter, it gathers different voices and brings them into dialogue. Admission is free.

About the exhibition

YOYI is the name of a ceremonial gathering of song and dance that is central to the Tiwi culture of northern Australia. YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal refers to this exclamation: an invitation to come together to celebrate and mourn.
In response to this call, each of the 26 invited artists pursues different strategies of questioning, reinventing, expanding, sustaining or renouncing the concepts of care, repair and healing. Some open critical perspectives on how the concept of care has been misused. Others propose methods of repair that are fundamentally different from Western approaches. Still others question whether healing is possible or even necessary. The spectrum of these voices is echoed in video works, installations, paintings and performances on display throughout the ground floor of the Gropius Bau.

With works by Pierre Adler, Brook Andrew, Kader Attia, Tosh Basco, Mohamed Bourouissa, Andrea Büttner, Lavkant Chaudhary, Lygia Clark, André Eugène, Guyodo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Johanna Hedva, Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Eva Kot’átková, Betty Muffler & Maringka Burton, Grace Ndiritu, People’s Archive of Rural India, Outi Pieski, Paula Rego, Tabita Rezaire & Amakaba, Georgia Sagri, Yhonnie Scarce, Reginald Sénatus (Redji), SERAFINE1369, and Wu Tsang.

Curated by Brook Andrew, Kader Attia with Giscard Bouchotte, Natasha Ginwala and Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, under the curatorial direction of Stephanie Rosenthal in collaboration with SERAFINE1369, In House: Artist in Residence 2021.

WHERE?

Gropiusbau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin-Kreuzberg

WHEN?

Friday, 16 September 2022 until Sunday, 15 January 2023

COST?

15 EUR / reduced 10 EUR

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