A new exhibition titled Undercurrents I: Stories, Symbols and Sounds opens at the Wende Museum on April 27 and runs until September.
“Please join us Saturday, April 27 for a celebration of the opening of the Wende Museum’s new exhibition Undercurrents I: Stories, Symbols, and Sounds,” reads a statement from the Wende about Saturday’s event. “Undercurrents focuses on independent and countercultural artwork from the Cold War. In addition, we are welcoming new works to our extended exhibition Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West, which spotlights art by currently and formerly incarcerated and unhoused persons. There will also be a new guardhouse installation by Saun Santipreecha, and new open storage displays. There will be a brief program with remarks by the curators and artists at 2 p.m., followed by a complimentary reception.”
One of those featured artists in the Transcendence exhibition is Nadya Tolokonnikova of Russian activist punks Pussy Riot, and she’ll be speaking on Saturday.
“Does art have the power to directly impact society?” the museum asks online. “This exhibition focuses on artwork that doesn’t follow the beaten track of art production and political messaging. Through appropriation and subversion of official imagery or by creating an alternative aesthetic universe, the artworks in this exhibition opened new perspectives and unconventional, alternative readings of reality.”
This new exhibition is co-curated with Isotta Poggi, associate curator of photographs at the Getty Research Institute, alongside the Wende.
“The exhibition will present East German and Polish underground publications, portfolios, and artist books from the collections of the Wende Museum and the Getty Research Institute, as well as Hungarian and Czechoslovak countercultural photographs from the Archive of Modern Conflict,” they say. “The Corita Art Center contributes works from U.S. artist, educator, and social justice advocate Corita Kent.”
Free public tours are offered at 11:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Visit wendemuseum.org for more information.
