GELSENKIRCHEN.- The international group exhibition Radikale Hoffnung (Radical Hope) explores the connections between art and worker resistance from early Modernism to the present day. It demonstrates how artists from different regions and eras have addressed such issues—whether from a documentary, poetic, critical, radical or solidarity-based perspective, as well as in reference to their own personal experience.
At the beginning of the 20th century, artists began to focus on worker resistance against social injustices. In the 1960s, some went a step further and took part in strikes themselves, spurred on by the democratic upheavals of the postwar era. Even today, the right to strike shapes public life, and striking images of industrial gridlock are to be found in the oeuvres of several artists. Equally, the global division of labour and the fragmentation of work under platform capitalism have complicated traditional forms of industrial action and given rise to new forms of resistance. Radical Hope is closely linked to local events. In the Ruhr region, and particularly in Gelsenkirchen with its many coal mines, the history of strikes in response to the decline of the mining and steel industries continues to shape the culture of remembrance to this day. Gelsenkirchen is also synonymous with feminist labour disputes. In the early 1980s, working women successfully fought for equal pay here, as part of a European-wide movement that also found expression in the arts. Members of the movement for fair pay also spoke out during the Wages for Housework campaign in 1970s Italy, which was co-initiated by women artists.
The exhibition links artworks to the aesthetic production of the labour movement including posters, text, music and theatre. It also throws light on how artists have taken up and developed this visual language. The title of the exhibition refers to Jonathan Lear’s book, Radical Hope, in which he describes hope as a deliberately adopted stance. The Gelsenkirchen exhibition explores the role that work and strikes have played in response to this, from the Modernist era to the present day.
Participating artists: Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Claire Fontaine, Jeremy Deller, Milli Gandini, Nicolás Guagnini, Käthe Kollwitz, Lee Lozano, Anna Malagrida & Mathieu Pernot, Irène Mélix, Gustav Metzger, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas Jean-Luc Moulène, Mariuccia Secol, Selma Selman, Takis (Panayiotis Vassilakis), Nicole Wermers
The exhibition is curated by Julia Höner (Director, Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen) and Friederike Sigler (Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Vienna).
To mark the opening of the exhibition, a magazine (in German and English) will be published, featuring an introduction by Julia Höner and Friederike Sigler, an essay by Sebastian Randerath, and texts on all of the participating artists.
