The Myth of "Home" – A Questioning

Group exhibition of active and former fellows of the Claussen Simon Foundation's stART.up scholarship programme at the Bucerius Kunst Forum

18.5. — 26.5.2024 
Auditorium

What does "home" mean? How do our identity and our sense of belonging to a place or a community develop? Eighteen active and former scholarship holders of the Claussen Simon Foundation's stART.up scholarship programme explore Ignacio Zuloaga's paintings in their group exhibition The Myth of Home - A Questioning.

The exhibition deals with the questions of how and why people create, seek or resist (national) identities. What role does the view "from outside" play in this? And what are the consequences to this? From paintings, graphics and photographs to videos, sculptures, and installations - with their works, the artists explore the desire for belonging. "Home" is understood neither as a concrete place nor as a purely mental construct. Instead of providing a definition, the exhibition reveals the contradictions that shape the term. 

Based on the exhibition The Myth of Spain. Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945) at the Bucerius Kunst Forum, the artists adapt, expand and question the themes of identity and home that appear in Zuloaga's work in a variety of ways. With his art, the Spanish artist created an image of Spain that still resonates today. In his paintings, he presents a supposedly authentic Spain, but viewers are challenged in their perception as soon as they are aware of the staging of the motifs. For example, the model for a flamenco dancing Gitana was an opera singer from Switzerland or a farm worker stood as a portrait for the large-format depiction of a cardinal. What do these discoveries mean for our understanding of real and fake, authentic, and artificial? Is there one true perception? 

The eighteen artists in the exhibition The Myth of "Home" - A Questioning confront the conflict, the ambiguity, the sometimes painful search for what "home" actually is or can be. Si-Ying Fung's installation Wanderlust, for example, tells the story of the Chinese mitten crab, which, although it "immigrated" over a hundred years ago, is still considered a stranger in German waters. Yi-Jou Chuang invites visitors into her washitsu (a Japanese room), in which three Taiwanese women from one family live, all of whom feel they belong to a different nationality. Simone Karl's work takes a feminist perspective on social attributions that originate from a patriarchal society.

The exhibition is being realised in cooperation with the Bucerius Kunst Forum to mark the tenth anniversary of the stART.up scholarship programme, with which the Claussen Simon Foundation supports young Hamburg artists on their path to an artistic freelance career. 

The Myth of "Home" - A Questioning is on show from 18 May to 26 May 2024, in the auditorium of the Bucerius Kunst Forum.
Admission to the exhibition on the 2nd floor is free of charge.

Participating artists:
Bea Brücker, Yi-Jou Chuang, Vedad Divović, Vera Drebusch, Si-Ying Fung, Alex Hojenski, Simone Karl, Simone Kesting, Nicole Kiersz, Judith Kisner, Hanna Lenz, Clémence Manachère, Andrés Muñoz, Katja Pilipenko, Julia Plath, Anne Reiter, Anna Resei, Kristina Savutsina

Curation:
Gesa Wieczorek (art historian and alumna of Dissertation Plus)