Ramesch Daha’s exhibition at Index, titled I AM HEALTHY, I CANNOT WRITE THIS LETTER MYSELF presents a process of working with and through a personal –and inherently political– archive of pain. A brown cardboard box, kept secret for many years, held the documents and letters which gave traces of a relative’s final years inside three concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
Ramesch Daha has worked with this archive, reproducing the letters and documents with the utmost care through drawing and painting. These gestures reveal an artistic process of research, and archive Daha’s own position within this complex family narrative.
Ramesch Daha (born Teheran 1971, lives and works in Vienna) has presented her ongoing work UNLIMITED HISTORY internationally and in a variety of formats, including a limited edition publication.
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February 2020
Karaoke Lecture is a performance in which Anna Kinbom invites the audience to join her in singing songs she has written between 2014-2018. These songs have been performed to various audiences, in public space and in art spaces. In 2019 Anna Kinbom produced a publication for her performance of Karaoke Lecture at Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (VBKÖ) in Vienna. At Index she presents this publication by performing her songs and inviting the audience to sing with her. More |
An evening about different ways to approach and meet an archive, to get to know it and to learn to navigate through its folders. Some of its stories about people, objects and happenings appear in broad daylight, while others lurk in the shadows, but are at the same time traces leading elsewhere. How can we extend the archive by building on its absences? How does the material circumstances affect the stories that are being told and that provoke our attention and reaction? These are questions that will be discussed during the evening, while further engaging with the Index archive and bringing up some of its highlights and blind spots.This event is organised and presented by curators Sarah Heuberger and Elias Kautsky as part of Index internship with focus on the archive. More |
Ramesch Daha and Helene Larsson Pousette discuss the writing of history, focusing on the role and visibility of women. When history has been written, certain information has been considered irrelevant and the construction of the past has excluded many stories from the official narrative.In the case of Maria and Sigmund Klein – presented in Ramesch Daha’s exhibition – we can read his words but not hers; we must read between the lines to imagine and interpret the words of Maria. How to write a complete history when some parts have been systematically deleted? How to rewrite it to bring characters back? This talk is organized in collaboration with Stockholms Kvinnohistoriska (Stockholm Museum of Women’s History). More |
Ramesch Daha and Kathrin Becker will discuss east and west dynamics in politics and culture, reflecting on some specific cases of disruption. Their dialogue will consider contemporary situations against a historical backdrop, contextualizing present day issues within a conversation about artistic positions, responsibility, and the connections between theory, politics and action.Kathrin Becker is a curator and author based in Berlin. In February 2020, she was named the new Artistic Director of the KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin. This conversation is organized in collaboration with Goethe-Institut. More |
Together with PRAKSIS in Oslo and Publics in Helsinki, Index initiates a new collaboration – Future Futures. As small institutions working with art from complementary positions, all three organizations have a scale and approach which allows for a more human touch. Joining together to create a network, we will share approaches to working with young people, democratic processes and new publics. The aim is to test new formats, learn from each other and define methods for including and emboldening young people in conversations about art, criticality and language. As part of our collaboration, both Index Teen Advisory Board and PRAKSIS Teen Advisory Board will take a ferry trip to Helsinki, building new frameworks to discuss art experiences with young people. Watch this space. More |
Parallel to our ongoing program in Stockholm, we cast our gaze to CentroCentro Madrid, where Rosana Antolí’s exhibition A Golden Age: Pulse, Throb, Drift – curated by Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris on behalf of Index Foundation – opens on Friday 21 February. Rosana Antolí works with rhythm and flow, with the tides of social choreography, eternal loops and feedback of the body in society. In this exhibition Antolí takes a dive into the aqueous as a state-of-mind. Through deep artistic investigation, Antolí expands aesthetic and movement-based understandings that question what is human. Drawing upon the current and urgent conversations of the state of planetary ecologies, A Golden Age considers the limits and demarcations of bodies in these times. More |