While organizing this exhibition, we sought connectionsâenergetic and in spiritâacross a wide range of artistic communities that helped us think through the transmission of social, political, and cultural knowledges and ways of being. We approached the task of surveying current artistic practices with a broad international scope by entering conversations already underway among artists; their artistic languages affirmed for us shared values, ideas, and expressions. In our research trips throughout continents, countries, and regions, wherever artists create spaciousness, we have found inspiration and understanding of the geographies we traverse as vast, complex, and dynamic.
Although travel restrictions of one kind had lifted in the aftermath of a global pandemic, movement around the worldâwhich was never equally granted to begin withâbecame increasingly fraught and controlled, subject to political ruptures and turmoil. We, as curators with access and resources, crossed thresholds to meet artists and organizers less mobile while rhetoric of security concealed mass destruction and displacement on the ground. Our sustained conversations with individuals as well as returns to places and their specificitiesâfor example, from the metropolitan hub of SĂŁo Paulo to the arctic city of TromsĂžâhave reinforced our interconnectedness and relationships as foundational to our project.
Reaching for one another in a world that cannot be fully understood from a single point of view or universal framework, we sought out thought partners with whom we shared ongoing inquiriesânot toward resolution but to better understand the unfolding of events around us and our own creative agency as curators with the platform of an exhibition. The title If the word weâinspired by one of our thought partners Haytham el-Wardanyâs commissioned essay for the 59th Internationalâhelped frame our curatorial practice. âWhat if the word we becomes a space for listening?â el-Wardany offered. âWeâ is a complex and heterogenous position from where the three of us navigate contradictions of life while being receptive to the frequencies of our surroundings.
If the word we features 61 artists whose works actively configure social life and collective experience that are deeply felt and spatially expansive. Most of the artist projects and presentations are commissions: In the spaces of the museum, they transform the publicsâ experience of the inherited architecture and embedded social histories; and on the printed pages of the catalogue, they give new form and boost signal to works that evoke everyday acts, forms, materials, environments, and economies of circulation. These works are vibrant expressions that give breath and body to portraits of worlds under duress. Highlighting practices that transverse mediumsâfrom painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture to installation, video, performance, and theaterâthe 59th Carnegie International celebrates numerous artistic gifts and legacies that populate this exhibition.
The 59th Carnegie International is the result of sustained conversations among us three, Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park, the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curators, with the support of Cynthia Stucki, assistant curator; Michelle Song, curatorial assistant; and Sergi Espinales, Margaret Powell Curatorial Fellow, as well as with thought partners Haytham El-Wardany, kimi hanauer, Marianne Nicolson, Christian Nyampeta, and Haegue Yang. Numerous colleagues have contributed through the development of art projects in the exhibition and through presenting and programming partnerships. Together, they bring knowledge, curiosity, and compassion to many facets of this project.
