20 Years of the VERBUND COLLECTION
The VERBUND COLLECTION is celebrating its 20th anniversary with an exhibition at the ALBERTINA Museum Vienna. Key items from the collection and new acquisitions will be presented on an exhibition area of around 1,000 m2. The exhibition can be seen at the ALBERTINA Museum Vienna from 29 February to 5 May 2024.
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the VERBUND COLLECTION is exhibiting its works at the ALBERTINA. On display are around 250 exhibits of the collection’s main topics “Feminist Avant-Garde” and “Perception of Spaces & Places” as well as numerous new acquisitions in the context of “Gender, Identity & Diversity”.
“VERBUND takes social responsibility and promotes projects in social, sporting and cultural areas,” says Michael Strugl, CEO VERBUND. “With the anniversary exhibition of the VERBUND COLLECTION, we are launching a multi-year cooperation between VERBUND and the ALBERTINA, as part of which we will also be supporting the reopening of the former Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg. Thanks to the cooperation, we are pleased to be able to give the exhibits in our company collection even greater visibility and public impact at home and abroad.”
Klaus Albrecht Schröder, managing director of the ALBERTINA offers his congratulations: “Anniversaries provide the opportunity to review the past and to take a look at everything in the round. The anniversary exhibition 20 YEARS OF THE VERBUND COLLECTION at the ALBERTINA presents a fantastic selection of works that focus both on important female artists of the collection, such as Cindy Sherman, VALIE EXPORT and Francesca Woodman, and also on important Austrian discoveries made by the collection’s director Gabriele Schor, including Birgit Jürgenssen, Renate Bertlmann and Auguste Kronheim.”
“VERBUND understands its commitment to contemporary art as being a part of its corporate culture,” says Michael Strugl. “The VERBUND COLLECTION aspires to discover individual artistic items that were previously hidden, to bring them to light and to leave a mark on our cultural memory.”
The VERBUND COLLECTION was established in 2004 by VERBUND, Austria’s leading power company, and comprises around 1,000 works by 200 artists. The 15 issued publications of the collection had a big impact on promoting the careers of a number of female artists. Curator and founding director Gabriele Schor coined the term “Feminist Avant-Garde" in order to emphasise the pioneering work done by female artists of the 1970s. They make a theme of their bodies, question the diktat of beauty, and reflect on the construct of female identities. Since 2010, the exhibition of the same name has toured to 15 cities in Europe and has been on display in venues including the Centre de Cultura Contemporánia in Barcelona, the Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and in the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna.
The exhibition 20 Yeas of the VERBUND COLLECTION presents new acquisitions in the context of “Gender, Identity & Diversity” that have never been seen in Austria before: artists create spaces of memory, such as South African-born Kganye Lebohang, who looks at her relationship with her deceased mother through photo montages, or Alexander Ugay, who was born in Kazakhstan. Starting from the Korean diaspora, he searches for traces of his ancestors using analogue and AI photographs. With her large collages, the Norwegian-Nigerian artist Frida Orupabo creates scenes covering topics such as colonial history, slavery, racism and sexism. Zanele Muholi identifies as non-binary and advocates actively for LGBTQ+ rights in South Africa. Muholi’s staged self-portraits criticise the Eurocentric view of the Black body. Sin Wai Kin deconstructs and reconstructs social narratives and embodies four non-binary identities of a fictitious boygroup with the video “It’s Always You”.
Works of the following artists are exhibited:
Renate Bertlmann, Barbara Bloom, Marcella Campagnano, Veronika Dreier, Renate Eisenegger, VALIE EXPORT, Gerda Fassel, Simon Fujiwara, Simryn Gill, Nan Goldin, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Suzy Lake, Lebohang Kganye, Anne Marie Jehle, Birgit Jürgenssen, Kirsten Justesen, Sin Wai Kin, Joachim Koester, Auguste Kronheim, Brigitte Lang, Louise Lawler, Angelika Loderer, Karin Mack, Gordon Matta-Clark, Anita Münz, Zanele Muholi, Ernesto Neto, ORLAN, Gabriel Orozco, Frida Orupabo, Florentina Pakosta, Margot Pilz, Ingeborg G Pluhar, Elodie Pong, Tomoko Sawada, Senga Nengudi, Elaine Shemilt, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Penny Slinger, Annegret Soltau, Sophie Thun, Alexander Ugay, Jeff Wall, Gillian Wearing, Carrie Mae Weems, Hannah Wilke, Martha Wilson, David Wojnarowicz, Francesca Woodman and Nil Yalter.
Curator of the anniversary exhibition is Gabriele Schor, founding director of the VERBUND COLLECTION.
