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Participating Artists:

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Sofie Arfwidson (SWE)    Painting

Lars Bjerre (DAN)    Painting

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Curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Simone Kraft

Curatorial Contribution:  Sophie Eliot and Dorina Hecht

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Consciences and Frontiers (Concept)

Introduction

Our psycho-social existence has been very much attuned to boundaries and differences within and without: Not only do we have the physical boundary of the skin which separates our interior from the exterior, but also have we built virtual frontiers of our consciences within as well as non-virtual barriers without ourselves.

Internal barriers

Inconsistencies of the “voice within” might lead to emotional difficulties, which are known to put our internal unity asunder. The effects range over many shades from discomfort or non-productivity to aggression, which are further reflected to our environment in so contradictory forms like remorse, fear, violence or rectitude and integrity.

In the same way, personality conflicts, whose causes and courses are as well multiple, not only lead to a swanking of humours – from melancholic to sanguine, choleric to phlegmatic as defined by the ancient Hippocratic school – but might express themselves further as frustration and intimidation. This thus can cause a personality complex of the Napoleonic order, as viewed by Alfred Adler, or of the narcissistic order, as defined by Erich Fromm or Sigmund Freud.

These internal conflicts culminate in confrontations within the faculty that distinguishes whether our actions are right or wrong – the human conscience – and thus to other grave consequences that might build a bridge to external barriers like aggression or segregation issues.

External barriers

Apart from building boundaries between countries, tribes and races, we misuse the internal difficulties and conflicts of our conscience as masks to justify our prejudices and misconceptions. As much as Juvenal’s “Mens sana in corpore sano” is of validity, so is accordingly valid “an unhealthy esprit in an unhealthy body” and in a global context “unhealthy conflicts of the conscience result in an unhealthy environment”. This resonates in

the immediate environment as frontiers of all kinds: Ideological debates about Muslim women wearing headscarves or not, if Africans rob Germans of their jobs and women, if all Arabs are sympathizers of Al-Qaida, if Poles steal Germans cars and jobs, if juvenile delinquent Germans of foreign origin should be deported, if the “black sheep” in Switzerland are responsible for >70% of rapes and other criminal offences, if some human beings are superior to others just because of the colour of their skin?

These are just a few of these external barriers that arise from our deep-rooted inner disruption and prejudices.

Conscience in Arts, Frontiers of Arts

Artists of all times have thematised human conscience and the frontiers it poses, being it allegorical, emblematic or symbolical depictions of a personified Conscientia, or – more prevalent – the depiction of related moral faculties, like Justitia or virtues and vice, as well as metaphorical narrations of situations when conscience decisions have to be made. …

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Aim of exhibition

The group exhibition Consciences and Frontiers is a part of an exhibition triptych based on the complex topic of the human being and the world as his/her home.

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The aim of this group exposition is to challenge national and international artists to articulate themselves on issues concerning the yawning gap between our conscience and our frontiers as well as the barriers within and without ourselves.

Selected artists

The artists invited to participate in this group exhibition have thus been selected according to the aforementioned considerations….

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Curators

The young curatorial team, composed of Simone Kraft und Bonaventure S. B. Ndikung, has not only gained experience by working with international artists but also embody this diversity in their vitae.

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