For Make your own exhibition, we adjusted our e-exhibition POWER/body/GENDER to fit an online representation of  Kunsthalle Zurich's exhibition space. This exhibition proposal was then exhibited at Kunsthalle Zurich. 

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POWER/body/GENDER is our first production stemming from Curatorial Research Online. All the old master works selected for its basis come from three rooms in the Louvres’ Denon wing and translate a panel of traditional interpretative views. To the exception of Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, all the artists are white men tackling traditional themes of their epoch through legendary stories and figures such as the Horatii Brothers by Jacques-Louis David, or Théodore Géricault with his Napoleonian officer.  All the original labels of the works present a very on-the-surface explanation, focusing on either historic or technical information. 

 

Reacting to that, we have selected figurative contemporary works that would challenge the discourses represented by the Louvre’s works and their curation. While this project hopes to question the politics of institutions such as the Louvre and its role in our contemporary society, we have also aimed to create striking aesthetic contrasts between the chosen works.

 

​For example, Kyle Dunn’s ‘Dance Party’ spotlights forms of homoerotic desires that the Louvre does not discuss in Jacques-Louis David’s work.

In another instance, the interaction between Eugène Delacroix’s ‘La mort de Sardanapale’ and Sheida Soleimani’s collage ‘Illuminated’, reveals the transhistorical reality of violence and dehumanisation imposed upon the female figure.