Mimétisme is a group exhibition probing an alternative conceptual framework for «theatricality» in the visual arts. Rather than looking at formal exchanges between theatre and the arts, this exhibition brings together works that use and critically reflect the abilities to act and to become like something else. In doing so, it leaves behind the dominant understanding of mimesis as realist pictorial representation in favour of what Walter Benjamin has referred to as the «mimetic faculty»: the mind’s ability to detect and appropriate similarities, to mirror others, to imitate, to immerse and to become.
Mimétisme begins to sketch an alternative history to the prevailing narrative of an overcoming of the mimetic paradigm. In this alternative history, mimesis and mimicry are not rejected, but used as performative strategies in order to critique, undermine and transform representations and societal regimes of identity from within, to counter the imposed mimesis of oppressive identification by using strategies of masking, camouflage and excessive mimicry. These strategies create a slippery terrain where the power of representation begins to turn back against itself.
Along the historical trajectories of Brechtian performance and feminism, Mimétisme moves from exploring societal forms of behavioural copying, empathy and becoming similar (as in immersion into milieus and cultural assimilation) to forms of excessive mimesis, sketching out different possibilities to address power relations, and to portray, once again, the relation between individual and environment, thing and context or figure and ground.
The exhibition is contextualised with an archive and a library of references and related material titled the Mimetic Cabinet, meant to offer insight into discussions on the subject surpassing the boundaries of various disciplines, such as art, biology, behavioural studies and politics.
25 January – 30 March 2008
Opening Thursday 24 January at 19.00
Pawel Althamer & Artur Zmijewski, Charif Benhelima, Lieven de Boeck, Claude Cahun, Mircea Cantor, Andrea Cooper, Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska, Dias & Riedweg, Harun Farocki, Tom Holert, Sofia Hulten, Peter Ott, Ria Pacquée, Jean Painlevé, Jean Rouch, Constanze Ruhm, Tomas Schmit, Isabelle Spengler, Erik Steinbrecher, Javier Téllez, Barbara Visser
Curated by Anselm Franke
Exhibition architecture: Pieter d’Haeseleer, Kris Kimpe and Bruno Poelaert
Production: Lotte De Voeght and Ari Hiroshige
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