On Saturday, September 14, 2024, the opening of Daniela Comani’s solo exhibition, The Reading Room, will take place. As part of the exhibition, Comani’s poster installation in Tor-/Karl-Liebknecht-Straße will only be on display until September 22! At the same time, Eric Meier’s new mural Access All Areas (AAAAA) in the foyer of the Kunstverein and his public art installation Völkerfreundschaft will be presented.
Image above: © Daniela Comani: The Reading Room
The Reading Room shows central series of works and a site-specific installation by the Berlin-based Italian artist Daniela Comani. The works, produced especially for this solo exhibition, are based on the artist’s extensive archive. They address gender inequality and its socio-political entanglements in supposedly equal societies by drawing attention to issues such as violence and power dynamics that are rooted in language and its use.
Comani, who has been exploring gender, identity and social stereotypes since the beginning of her career, often uses text-based works to expose language-based discrimination and stereotypes perpetuated by the media. She often reverses the given gender roles and thus forces a different perception. This is also the case in the eleven new works from the series You are Mine, in which Comani continues her research into femicides. These, as well as the new video work Reversal Exercise, illustrate this process and invite the viewer to experience how a simple gender reversal dramatically changes the narrative.
The site-specific installation Orlando’s Library is also organized in a similar way. Dedicated to Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid character Orlando, it shows bookshelves with a well-known reading canon, which is now confusingly dominated exclusively by heroines. In addition, the ongoing series Cover Versions will be shown, in which the artist reinterprets magazine covers with self-portraits, creating a media diary.
The exhibition was curated by Chiara Valci Mazzara and Susanne Prinz.
WHEN?
Saturday, September 14 – 22, 2024
Opening hours: Thursday to Saturday, 2-6 pm
WHERE?
Linienstraße 40 + Billboard Tor-/Karl-Liebknecht-Straße
