This exhibition and its attendant research follow the path of an entity, once a person, who passed from a moment of hypervisibility into invisibility at a critical juncture in their life. It was in this later moment of life, when their body had undergone a previously unknown transformation, that a new freedom came to them. This new freedom then allowed an entirely novel path of self-realization to occur.
The poet Lisa Robertson (born 1961) calls this self-realization an “undocumented corporeality,” where new “scintillating research” can begin for the entity. It is not that a new life begins as much as a new mode of operating begins. This operation is done from the margins, in secret and also in plain-view. This new body plays with the dereliction of value – they don’t need anything you have to offer.
Robertson’s proverbs are used as a soft-launching pad for the conception of the exhibition, which brings together works by artists from varying historical and geographical backgrounds.
The exhibition begins with the Japanese photographer Toyoko Tokiwa (1928–2019). Her work attests to the transformation of life through the subjects of her investigations. She presents the form of this new body after it has passed from a time of hyperfixation to near invisibility.
Like all the artists included, Tokiwa’s work in the exhibition is not hinged upon her identity or nationality. Her photographs initiate this presentation of an exhibition that is conspicuously concerned less with ‘who’ is doing the work, and instead concerned with ‘why’ are they doing the work. Like the works presented, the person (artist) attached to the creation of the work is no longer just a person or identity, as they are placed in focused communication within a larger study of this unforged path to self-realization.
Works by Dusti Bongé (1903–93), Rosemarie Castoro (1939–2015), Anna Bella Geiger (born 1933), Susan Hiller (1940–2019), Miyako Ishiuchi (born 1947), Bertram Schmiterlöw (1920–2002), Sydney Schrader (born 1987), and Linda Semadeni (born 1985) fulfill this path.
Ultimately, this path is one of obsolescence, as their evaluation of previous operations of living did not meet their expectations. However, by becoming obsolete, they remain durable and steadfast. In alignment with Zen principles, they are emptied of their former selves and are now made anew and unbreakable.
Works in the exhibition by these artists focus on the space between the violent tumult of this transformation and the peace afforded upon passing to the other side. Loneliness is a virtue of the works, as they operate in the area of invisibility. But their bodies are still recognized, their doubts and sensations still fully lived. These new entities demand more from the lives they lead before, as they offer an alternative interpretation of necessity.
The exhibition presents an intimate display of works not only to encounter but to drift amongst. This presentation offers a promenade of experiences, ornamented by lives that have shed the remand for use-value foisted upon them by society. A loss through which the bodies discover a newautonomy of equally substantive pleasure and ruin.
–Alan Longino
Curated by Alan Longino, realised by Fatima Hellberg, Andrew Christopher Green and Martha Joseph
An accompanying publication, edited by Fatima Hellberg, Andrew Christopher Green and Martha Joseph, will be published on the occasion of the opening.
Philosopher of her own Ruin is the final exhibition in the programme of Fatima Hellberg.
Curator, writer, and art historian Alan Longino (1987–2024) was born and raised in Biloxi, Mississippi. Having worked across the Rhineland, New York, and Chicago, he was a Ph.D. student in art history at the University of Chicago, where he ran the space Longino I.A.H. (2023–2024). His academic research focused on postwar Japanese conceptual art. As an independent curator he organised and co-organised exhibitions at galleries and universities including 15 Orient, New York; Empty Gallery, Hong Kong; Gallery G, Hiroshima; the University of Hawai’i; and Yale Union. With Yale Union they re-published Yutaka Matsuzawa’s 1988 manuscript Quantum Art Manifesto for the first time outside of Japan.
Realised with the generous support of The Jenni Crain Foundation, Kunststiftung NRW, Pro Helvetia, the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung and a circle of supporters whom generously have committed to this project, including Stephen Cheng and Alexander Lau, James Cahn and Jeremiah Collatz, Ines Knauber, Julius Woeste, Manoucher Khoshbakht, Dr Antonia Nolte, Max Mayer, Maxwell Graham, Jan Kaps, Piotr Drewko, Liz Deschenes, and Carol Greene.
