DOCUMENTA 12
HAPPENINGText: Yoshito Maeoka
Schloss Wilhelmshehe is located 30 minutes away from the other four halls. It used to be a castle, now it is used as a museum.
Yan Lei
This hall embodied the concept of this exhibition the most. They usually have pre 19th century painting works, but this time they showed new works and old works at the same time beyond eras and context. These works below are by Yan Lei.
Sonia Abián Rose, The concentration camp of love, 2007
Also the works by Sonia Abián Rose was blended in with the actual religious works in the museum, you wouldn’t notice that new works are there .
Sonia Abián Rose, The concentration camp of love, 2007
Cute Rococo looks with the flutter of angels on the surface, but if you look carefully there is a sentence which is well-known from Nazi concentration camps, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (you get free, if you work). You will find a sense of black humor here.
Kerry James Marshall, The Lost Boys, 1993
The painting works by Kerry James Marshall, which floats with a symbol of modern and ancient times. The religious imaginative photo works by Zofika Kulik are displayed alongside 18th century paintings.
I would like to mention one more example of sharing space. The engravings of Hokusai, The Koran, Hindu arts, and the engraving of Sufi allegory, embroideries, drawings. They were all displayed with protection lights in a peculiar place shared by video works by African and South American artists.
There was not enough space to write everything about the event but, the more I read the text, the more I got the concept or the meaning of this project and I thought that I could reach to a point beyond the exhibition. They say that Documenta will rank the next 5 years trend, but thinking what is going to happen in the world art scene by the experience we got here could be one of the most absorbing things.
Documenta 12
Date:June 16th – September 23rd, 2007
Place:Kassel, Germany
http://www.documenta12.de
Text: Yoshito Maeoka
Translation: Junko Isogawa
Photos: Yoshito Maeoka