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February Issue
2008
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Features Exhibition on Memory
Family photo albums, Road Runner cartoons, the works of Shakespeare, and Barack Obama's presidential primary campaign are just some of the subjects explored in the Weatherspoon Art Museum's upcoming exhibition, The Lining of Forgetting: Internal & External Memory in Art, on view from Feb. 10 through May 25, 2008. This major international art exhibition explores the ways we remember, both as individuals and collectively, and highlights how we often forget, rewrite and fabricate memory.
The Lining of Forgetting features cutting-edge sculpture, photography, work on paper, installation, video and computer-generated works by fourteen artists from the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Vietnam, including Edgar Arceneaux, Deborah Aschheim, Louise Bourgeois, Janice Caswell, John Coplans, Pablo Helguera, Emma Kay, Dinh Q. Lê, Scott Lyall, David Rokeby, Mungo Thomson, Cody Trepte, Kerry Tribe, and Rachel Whiteread. Ranging in ages from 22 to 96, some of these artists are well established and others are just beginning to develop international reputations.
An uneasy reliance on the silicon chip, spectacular advances in brain imaging and research, a massive population (the largest ever) entering their senior years; and a noted propensity for cultural amnesia, have worked to increase society's preoccupation with issues surrounding memory. Organized by the Weatherspoon's Curator of Exhibitions Xandra Eden, The Lining of Forgetting explores the force of memory in our lives and reveals the complexity of personal, collective and artificial memory, and their interface.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by the narrative of French filmmaker Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983): "I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining." This film, and others by Marker, including La Jetêe (1962), reveal how memory is inconstant and, thus, should never be mistaken for a manifestation of the past; rather, every time a memory is articulated it changes and shows itself linked to both the past and the future.
A catalogue designed by the award-winning firm Volume, Inc accompanies the exhibition. The publication includes artist bios, full color images and essays by Eden, who frames the works within current contemporary art practice and the context of the exhibition; British cultural theorist Dr. John Roberts, who uses Marker's films as a reference point to explore memory as creative and productive labor; and new media curator Dr. Sarah Cook, who examines the increasing interest in memory as artistic subject matter in our era of high technology. The Lining of Forgetting travels to the Austin Museum of Art in Spring 2009.
Curator of Education Ann Grimaldi has organized a full roster of education and public programs, including an international film series, artist talks, workshops and tours. This project is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council with funding from the state of North Carolina and the National Endowment from the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or visit (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
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