Grace Schwindt: Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society
26 Sep - 23 Nov 2014
Badischer Kunstverein is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the London based artist Grace Schwindt in Germany. The exhibition centers around her new film "Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society", which was co-produced by the Kunstverein. Further performative and sculptural works have been created that are closely related to the film and have been newly conceived for the Kunstverein.
Grace Schwindt works primarily in the media of film, performance, sculpture and text. In her multifaceted works the artist calls the construction of history and memory and the idea of witnessing into question. Which roles do bodies, language and objects play in the production of knowledge and social relations?
Her film sets made of minimalist architecture and selected props mark a specific social space, in which every movement of the performers represents, generates and challenges a system or an institution. Schwindt’s choreographies are based on precisely developed scripts, and the single word as an elementary form is imbued with a symbolic significance.
For her new film "Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society" Schwindt refers to conversations she experienced in her childhood in a leftist milieu in Frankfurt am Main. The text, which appears in the film in various forms, is based on an interview that the artist conducted with a political activist, who was part of the students’ movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In this dense narrative that is transferred to the dancers and the film set, Schwindt asks about the meaning of freedom, about the possibilities for accessing it, and about what is needed to create a free society.
The film is supplemented by a performative mural, in which Schwindt transfers interviews she conducted to the exhibition wall, and by sculptures with individually made vases that take up the interview topic of “property and loss of objects”. A new performance symbolizes the fragility of the body between intimacy and isolation, while a text spoken aloud comments on the desire for closeness in a capitalist system.
Curated by Anja Casser.
The film "Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society" was commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, Badischer Kunstverein, Eastside Projects and The Showroom, in association with Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Bath; Site Gallery; Tramway and Zeno X Gallery. Supported by Arts Council England, Hessian Film Fund, and The Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Grace Schwindt(*1979, Offenbach) lives and works in London.
She studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art and Photography at the University of Westminster in London.
Grace Schwindt works primarily in the media of film, performance, sculpture and text. In her multifaceted works the artist calls the construction of history and memory and the idea of witnessing into question. Which roles do bodies, language and objects play in the production of knowledge and social relations?
Her film sets made of minimalist architecture and selected props mark a specific social space, in which every movement of the performers represents, generates and challenges a system or an institution. Schwindt’s choreographies are based on precisely developed scripts, and the single word as an elementary form is imbued with a symbolic significance.
For her new film "Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society" Schwindt refers to conversations she experienced in her childhood in a leftist milieu in Frankfurt am Main. The text, which appears in the film in various forms, is based on an interview that the artist conducted with a political activist, who was part of the students’ movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In this dense narrative that is transferred to the dancers and the film set, Schwindt asks about the meaning of freedom, about the possibilities for accessing it, and about what is needed to create a free society.
The film is supplemented by a performative mural, in which Schwindt transfers interviews she conducted to the exhibition wall, and by sculptures with individually made vases that take up the interview topic of “property and loss of objects”. A new performance symbolizes the fragility of the body between intimacy and isolation, while a text spoken aloud comments on the desire for closeness in a capitalist system.
Curated by Anja Casser.
The film "Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society" was commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, Badischer Kunstverein, Eastside Projects and The Showroom, in association with Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Bath; Site Gallery; Tramway and Zeno X Gallery. Supported by Arts Council England, Hessian Film Fund, and The Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Grace Schwindt(*1979, Offenbach) lives and works in London.
She studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art and Photography at the University of Westminster in London.