27.-30. 6. 2019, Inversionen #2 Georges Adéagbo: “La mort et la résurrection d’Aby Warburg”..!

Venue: Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, Heilwigstrasse 116, 20249 Hamburg

Exhibition, Warburg-Haus, Hamburg

Curated by Petra Lange-Berndt (Professor, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg) & Rebekka Seubert (freelanced curator) in collaboration with Stephan Köhler (Kulturforum Süd Nord)

28–30 June 2019, open daily from 2-8pm, admission free

Opening 27 June 2019, 7pm, reading room, Warburg-Haus, Heilwigstraße 116, 20249 Hamburg

Due to limited space, please pre-register for the opening by email: inga.dreesen@studium.uni-hamburg.de

28 June 2019, 11am, guided tour with Kerstin Schankweiler (art historian, Berlin): The Mobilisation of Things

29 June 2019, 2pm, Picknick & reading with Georges Adéagbo, Stephan Köhler and others, Römischer Garten, 22587 Hamburg

The exhibition and event series Inversionen at the Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, focuses on the continuing importance and global relevance of Aby Warburg’s research and ideas. For the first time, contemporary artists will be invited at regular intervals to produce new, site-sensitive works in order to explore Warburg’s approaches and interests as well as the history and architecture of the famous building at Heilwigstraße 116.

We are particularly pleased that the series can be continued in the summer of 2019 with Georges Adéagbo who received the Finkenwerder Kunstpreis in 2017. The internationally acclaimed artist (*1942, Cotounou, Benin, lives and works in Hamburg and Togbin, Benin) has long been involved with Aby Warburg and analyses the global migration of images, ideas, and things within complex installations. With his artistic practice, Georges Adéagbo is one of the central and outstanding artists who critically examine (post-)colonial constellations. After studying law in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Rouen in France, he returned to Benin in 1968 and developed his practice as an autodidact: every day, the artist displays found, purchased, or specially commissioned objects, pictures as well as his own handwritten texts. This results in networks that deal with daily politics and, in a complex way, with the history of the exchange between Africa and former protagonists of colonialism as well as the afterlife of these constellations. In 1999 Adéagbo took part in the Venice Biennale and won the „premio della Giuria“; at the latest since 2002, when he contributed a central work at documenta 11 curated by Okwui Enwezor, he has been one of the most renowned artists in the contemporary art world. The Hanseatic City of Hamburg is a central location for Adéagbo’s site-sensitive practice. Many of his interventions have taken place here. In 2015, for example, a glass cube entitled Inverted Space was placed on the Altona Balkon, dealing with the role of Hamburg shipping companies during colonialism. With Georges Adéagbo, the series Inversionen is extended by an artist who enjoys worldwide recognition, lives in Hamburg, and shapes contemporary debates.

Kindly supported by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Liebelt Stiftung Hamburg, Universität Hamburg, Warburg-Melchior-Olearius-Stiftung

Image: Georges Adéagbo: Assemblage at Studio Adéagbo, Hamburg (detail), April 2019. Photo: Stephan Köhler