Guided tour

In an interactive tour through Politics of Love, the curatorial assistant Jaana Heine will provide insights into the subject of the exhibition as well as its theoretical and historical points of reference and will present some of the positions.

“We’re all against war. But what are we for? Peace, we say. What is peace?”

Highlighting this key question, the Art-of-Peace Biennale was launched in 1985 on the initiative of Fluxus artist Robert Filliou at the Kunsthaus Hamburg and Kunstverein in Hamburg. Today, some 40 years later, in our time of mounting global crises, war violence and massive suffering, this question remains highly acute. While national and individual divisions are increasing, essential visions for joint solutions and coalitions of action, from which new concepts of networking and collaboration might take shape, are vanishing.

The international group exhibition Politics of Love counters the sharply defined contours of delimitations and power conflicts with many-voiced expressions of togetherness and inclusion. Taking Michael Hardt’s thesis of a socially engaged “politics of love” as a starting point, it addresses the diversity of intimacy, the common good and the richness of multi-perspectival experience. As a transformative power, love is the basis for coexistence in solidarity that connects us in our differences and multiplicities. Politics of Love conjoins works of emerging and established international artists, including retrospective encounters with participatory projects as well as current collaborative practices, which open up perspectives for a collectively created, more peaceful future.

Participating artists: Mounira Al Solh, Francis Alÿs, Isaac Chong Wai, Anna Ehrenstein, Amna Elhassan, FAIRY BOT (Jon Frickey, Thies Mynther, Sandra Trostel), Robert Filliou, Parastou Forouhar, Green Go Home (Rirkrit Tiravanija & Tomas Vu), Johan Grimonprez, Elza Gubanova & Leon Seidel, Shilpa Gupta, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Soyon Jung, Hiwa K, Rebecca Katusiime & Emmanuel Oloya, Tilman Küntzel, Lulu MacDonald, Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya, Sabine Mohr, Dan Peterman, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Wolf Vostell

Curated by Dr. Belinda Grace Gardner and Anna Nowak