Resist: Be Modern (Again)

John Hansard Gallery

Photography / 2019

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Curated by Alice Maude-Roxby and Stefanie Seibold, ‘Resist: be modern (again)’ explores the practices of women artists, designers and writers of the 1920s and 30s through the work of contemporary artists.

These early pioneering women were important groundbreakers for their time, many of their ideas are reverberating until today. Their battles against social conventions and aesthetic dogmas paved the way for today’s understanding of an expanded field of art, as well as for contemporary personal freedoms.Exhibiting artists: Becky Beasley, Madeleine Bernstorff, Tessa Boffin, Ricarda Denzer, Andrea Geyer, Moira Hille, Alice Maude-Roxby, Nick Mauss, Ursula Mayer, Falke Pisano, Ingrid Pollard, Tanoa Sasraku-Ansah, Katie Schwab, Stefanie Seibold, Megan Francis Sullivan, S. Louisa Wei, Riet Wijnen, Gillian Wylde, and a contribution by curator Beatriz Herráez.

‘Resist: be modern (again)’ looks back at these revolutionary art, design, performative and written practices. Using the lens of contemporary art, theory and design, the exhibition highlights the importance and influence of these long-lost early avant-garde practices into the present. ‘Resist: be modern (again)’ showcases collaborations between women who, due to either gender, sexuality or ethnicity, have been censored out, devalued or marginalised over time. This exhibition brings their practice and contribution out of the archives and into the foreground.

Contemporary artists reactivate and represent these early practices through mapping, transcribing, sampling, referencing, reciting, re-telling or re-making, reclaiming their lasting value and importance for today’s art world and beyond.

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