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Dream On is about daring to dream, even if against one's better judgment.
Overview Dream On, Bonnefanten Free Friday 2024. Photo: Saverio Sammartino.
This exhibition explores a new lineage in the Bonnefanten collection and contemporary art. Old folklore, legends, rituals and incantations are thereby the starting point for new work.
Historical customs and stories are revived. They serve as a mirror for current social problems and thus depict an alternative future.
Overview Dream On, Bonnefanten 2024. Photo: Peter Cox.
Overview Dream On Bonnefanten Free Friday 2024. Photo: Saverio Sammartino.
Their artworks are fairy tales and stories, yet always lead to a hopeful view of the real future.
Overview Dream On, Bonnefanten Free Friday 2024. Photo: Saverio Sammartino.
The artists of Dream On claim a place for marginalized groups and vanished cultures, and thus for underexposed and underappreciated stories.
In Dream On, political and social issues are put on the agenda. Issues such as decoloniality and intersectional feminism are broached.
Overview Dream On, Bonnefanten 2024. Photo: Peter Cox.
The artists work lightheartedly and with humor, but are not afraid to bite
Hopeful dreams
The artists in Dream On are hopeful of putting the world to rights in uncertain and frightening times. They are not enticed by doom-mongering in their art. For them, old folklore, legends, rituals and incantations form the starting point for new artworks. New life is breathed into historical customs and stories, which serve as mirrors for current social problems and the depiction of an alternative future. They dare to muse nostalgically and dream about things to come while laughing.
Re-enchanting the world
Activist but not cynical. Based on this fundamental attitude, the artists put politically and socially engaged topics like decolonialisation and intersectional feminism (and various forms of social injustice) on the agenda. They claim a place for marginalised groups and vanished cultures, and thus essentially for under-represented and under-valued stories. The artists denounce things, but do so in a light-hearted and humorous way.
New works
The presentation includes proposed acquisitions by Ali Cherri, which incorporate mythical elements from Judaism and Sumerian mythology, for example, in a video and sculptures about the social and ecological impact of the Merowe Dam, in northern Sudan. Three new acquisitions by Sofiia Dubyna portray good friends of the artist, surrounded by sexual objects and religious elements. They address the thin line between pleasure and violence, and trust and abuse, that women have to tread with regard to sexual matters. Especially for the museum, Morena Bamberger (Roermond 1994) created a new work about her Sinti family, in dialogue with the artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas.
Forming a whole
Dream On explores a new line in the Bonnefanten Collection and contemporary art. The exhibition links up with the first Dutch solo exhibibition by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: This is not the end of the road. A key point is one of the most important works in her oeuvre: Re-enchanting the World, a series of twelve tapestries. The project is an attempt to expand on European art history and its visual idiom through scenes from the Roma culture. Mirga-Tas (Zakopane, 1978) takes visual motifs from the West-European canon and then throws them open, adding a new storyline, which revolves around the importance of women in her community.
Artists DREAM ON
Morena Bamberger, Sofiia Dubyna, Ali Cherri, Otobong Nkanga, melanie bonajo, Hadassah Emmerich, Laure Prouvost, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Grayson Perry, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Alia Farid Aristote Mago, Laura Lima, Antoine Berghs, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Lee Scratch Perry, Marleen Rothaus, Danaë Moons, Marta Volkova & Slava Shevelenko and Patrick Van Caeckenbergh.
Header: Alia Farid, At the Time of the Ebb, 2019. Videostill. Collection Bonnefanten. Courtesy Alia Farid and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris