EXOTICA News from the School of Art, Architecture and Design

MA Curating the Contemporary students, Fanny Nina Borel, Myrto Katsimicha and Elisabetta Rabajoli curated the exhibition 'Exotica and 4 other cases of the self.

MA Curating the Contemporary students, Fanny Nina Borel, Myrto Katsimicha and Elisabetta Rabajoli curated the exhibition 'Exotica and 4 other cases of the self' at me Collectors Room, Berlin which opened on 17 September as part of Berlin Art Week 2014.

Taking as a starting point the Olbricht collection, the exhibition investigated aspects of the self in contemporary society through the prism of contemporary artworks and Wunderkammer objects.

Treating the individual as a Wunderkammer the exhibition reinvented the five traditional categories: artificialia, naturalia, scientifica, mirabilia, and exotica evoking different perspectives towards the human existence.

From the wonders of the world to the wonders of the self – visitors were invited to further reflect on and question the way we relate to ourselves. With an opening breakfast and a series of collateral events – a workshop with young people in collaboration with artist Max Sudhues, a curators’ tour and an afternoon of durational performances that activated the space by Emma Waltraud Howes, Faye Green and Yurie Ido –  that run throughout Berlin Art Week the exhibition attracted the press and invited different kind of audiences to engage with its main theme, ‘the self’ in the contemporary society.

The exhibition and the accompanying publication are the product of a collaboration between the three curators Fanny Nina Borel, Myrto Katsimicha, and Elisabetta Rabajoli, as part of their Master’s degree in ‘Curating the Contemporary’ at London Metropolitan University with the Whitechapel Gallery and me Collectors Room/Olbricht Foundation as partners.

Artists: Marina Abramović, Eva Aeppli, Barry X Ball, Matthew Barney, Chuck Close, Graham Dolphin, Jan Fabre, Sylvie Fleury, Andreas Golder, Julie Heffernan, Krištof Kintera, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Terence Koh, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Juan Muñoz, Eadweard Muybridge, Tony Oursler, Gerhard Richter, Collier Schorr, Cindy Sherman, Helmut Stallaerts, Otto Steinert, Werner Rohde, Paloma Varga Weisz and Erwin Wurm.