Dora García
ROOMS, CONVERSATIONS
21 Apr - 01 Jul 2007
In collaboration with Julia Schaefer, the Archives of the BstU – Federal Commissioner for the Records of the National Security Service (Stasi) of the Former German Democratic Republic – Leipzig branch, Gedenkstätte Museum in der “Runden Ecke”, Kunstpädagogisches Institut at the University of Leipzig, Lena Seik/Alexandra Kühnert (YOUR GfZK).
Dora García uses the exhibition space as a platform to investigate the relationship between the visitor, the artwork and place. To this end the artist often draws on interactivity and performance. Through minimal changes, not encroaching on the space, the room is converted into a sensory experience, with each visitor leaving it again with his or her perceptions altered, or at the very least perhaps with a degree of skepticism. By engaging with Dora García’s work we develop a sense to begin reading even the smallest signs as possible signifiers. The artist engages herself with the question of what is real and what is fiction. And thus visitors become protagonists in a fiction: sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.
While searching for information on the city of Leipzig during her Blinky Palermo grant from the East German Savings Bank- (Sparkasse-) Foundation together with the Leipzig Sparkasse, Dora García came across the Museum an der “Runden Ecke”, the Stasi and the events in Leipzig in 1989 (“The Peaceful Revolution”). Her work exhibited in the GfZK grapples with the history of the Stasi and engages itself with methods of surveillance.
Dora García uses the exhibition space as a platform to investigate the relationship between the visitor, the artwork and place. To this end the artist often draws on interactivity and performance. Through minimal changes, not encroaching on the space, the room is converted into a sensory experience, with each visitor leaving it again with his or her perceptions altered, or at the very least perhaps with a degree of skepticism. By engaging with Dora García’s work we develop a sense to begin reading even the smallest signs as possible signifiers. The artist engages herself with the question of what is real and what is fiction. And thus visitors become protagonists in a fiction: sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.
While searching for information on the city of Leipzig during her Blinky Palermo grant from the East German Savings Bank- (Sparkasse-) Foundation together with the Leipzig Sparkasse, Dora García came across the Museum an der “Runden Ecke”, the Stasi and the events in Leipzig in 1989 (“The Peaceful Revolution”). Her work exhibited in the GfZK grapples with the history of the Stasi and engages itself with methods of surveillance.