New World Museum Vienna Exhibition: "Re:Present - Unlearning Racism"
The World Museum Vienna is displaying a new exhibition entitled "Re:Present - Unlearning Racism" during Black History Month. Read about the new exhibition and view some sample pieces from the exhibit.
"Re:Present - Unlearning Racism" is on display at the World Museum Vienna until the end of Black History Month. / Picture: © Weltmuseum Wien - World Museum Vienna / Calle Libre
The Weltmuseum Wien (World Museum Vienna) is now displaying a new exhibition throughout Black History Month.
“Re:Present - Unlearning Racism” will be on display until March 1, 2022.
In this interactive exhibition that includes talks and guided tours, activists and artists artistically take a stand on racism, colonialism, and representation.
Re:Present is an exhibition project of the Calle Libre Street Art Festival in cooperation with the World Museum Vienna.
The cooperation between Calle Libre and the World Museum Vienna opens dialogue and fosters critical self-reflection about the collection and the museum. The project encourages us to deal with our past and our present to play a responsible role in the future of our society.
To celebrate Black History Month, the World Museum will also have high-profile panel discussions on Black Austrian history and present, anti-racist workshops and guided tours for adults and youth, and workshops for children on the achievements of Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Benin.
About the exhibition
Re:Present was the theme of the Calle Libre Street Art Festival 2021. Together with the World Museum Vienna, the festival aims to create a platform for artistic discourse about the legacy of colonialism and its consequences for the countries affected by the exploitation of their (human) resources.
With this exhibition project, Calle Libre and the World Museum Vienna wish to facilitate dialogue by inviting artists and activists to contribute critical voices and empowerment initiatives to the exhibition.
The artworks, some of which were created directly on the walls of the museum’s galleries, link to other works in public spaces that were created in the Calle Libre Festival in 2021 and in previous years.
Eleven artistic positions by international artists and photographers will be on display at the World Museum Vienna. The artworks aim to promote honest dialogue on difficult topics inside and outside the museum.
The exhibition is based on the assumption that, as a consequence of growing polarization in society, it is becoming more important to examine the heterogeneity of our shared pasts.
Many of today’s social fault lines are rooted in our colonial past, in cultural appropriation, and in the subjugation of collective memories.
Europeans have been constructing and passing on skewed representations of identities, cultures, and peoples for far too long.
The poster visual of the special exhibition Re:Present is an abstracted image of a Black man raising his fist, based on a picture by the Viennese photographer Angelo Kreuzberger.
The photograph is part of his portrait series depicting members of Vienna’s POC community, in which those in the picture decided how to present themselves, their posture and their body language.
The raised fist serves not only as a symbol and fighting stance of the current Black Lives Matter movement but also of political and social movements in the past.
The Calle Libre Festival 2021
The 8th edition of the Calle Libre Festival took place in Vienna from 2 to 7 August 2021.
Through various artworks in public spaces and the World Museum Vienna, international and local artists presented new visual worlds and novel patterns of interpretation of their socio-cultural realities and collective memories.
Specifically, this edition’s artworks aimed to foster honest dialogue, overcome stereotypes shaped by art history, and come closer to the deconstruction of hegemonic imagery.
World Museum Vienna
The World Museum Vienna is located at Heldenplatz, 1010 Vienna.
“Re:Present - Unlearning Racism” will be on display for the entirety of Black History Month (February).
The museum is open Monday and Thursday-Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It is also open Tuesday from 10:00 am to 9:00 p.m., and it is closed on Wednesdays.
There are specific time slots that must be reserved for guided tours of “Re:Present - Unlearning Racism.”
Tickets for the exhibition cost € 6.
More information can be found here.