Pictures by Trevor Lloyd

Donna Huanca, Ed Fornieles, FORT, Grace Weaver, Liping Ting, Hanne Lippard, Lauryn Youden and Marco Bruzzone

What is it that seems to give meaning to life? What is it that promises social success today on the market of endless possibilities? And how does self-staging work when specialness is the standard?

The first group exhibition within the programme UP (Unsustainable Privileges) at Galerie Wedding brings together artistic positions that allow the examination of different perspectives on a society in which the imperative of uniqueness prevails. What are the consequences of lifestyle differentiation, the increasing complexity of cultural codes and the persistent pressure to market one’s own identity?

Paradigms of the workplace (Hanne Lippard) will be considered just as phenomena of leisure, the gradual internalisation of social codes (FORT), techniques of subjective self-care (Lauryn Youden) and -experience (Liping Ting), the precarious relationship between stylisation and complexity (Grace Weaver) and the systematic development of fluid social conditions (Ed Fornieles). An exploration of the interplay between national identities and personal historiography (Marco Bruzzone) is mirrored by the investigation of the relationships and oscillations between traditional techniques of social positioning, masking and the need for authenticity (Donna Huanca).

I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes positions itself amongst the tensions that arise between a demanding stance toward one’s own life (extending from the search for meaning to the attainment of wellbeing), and our abilities to respond to the respective demands. Different phenomena of the singular and various ways of building identity are made tangible and can be experienced aesthetically.

Nadia Pilchowski