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Stockholm gallery opens ‘Wag the Dog’ exhibition

A multimedia exhibition by Armenian artist Azat Sargsyan on the perception of reality presented by the mass media, marks the start of the spring season at Stockholm art gallery wip:sthlm.

Published: 9 March 2010 10:59 CET

Stockholm gallery opens 'Wag the Dog' exhibition

In Make History for a Pink Future, Azat Sargsyan, a visual artist based in both Yerevan and Stockholm, explores the ways reality can be tweaked and manipulated in order to suit purposes beyond the public awareness.

The multimedia montage exhibition takes as its starting point the American film Wag the Dog that premiered in 1997 just a month before the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit the mainstream news and presented an uncanny link between fiction and reality.

Wag The Dog tells the story of a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer trying to save the president, who is alleged to have had a sexual affair. In order to steer the public’s attention away from the factual events, a war is created in Albania.

The artist, who has spent the winter in residence at the gallery, uses news clips, hyperlinks, texts, photos and video footage to fuse the real with the imaginary and challenges the perception of reality as presented through the lens of mass media.

Azat Sargsyan is the co-founder and artistic director of the Gyumri Biennial that was initiated in 1998 and will open its seventh edition this autumn. He has exhibited at the 1997 Venice Biennial, the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial, and in 1999 at the After The Wall exhibition at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Recent exhibitions include the Thessaloniki Biennale, the Moscow Biennale and the Cerveria Biennale in Portugal.

Wip:sthlm [work in progress] is a collaboration between 96 artists based in Årstaberg, Stockholm. Since its inception in 2006 wip:sthlm has developed four core activities: artists’ studios, gallery, artist-in-residence programme and a bookshop.

The Make History for a Pink Future exhibition runs until Saturday March 13th and is the first of a series of events taking place during the spring.

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African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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