Page 52 - "he 2020 Guggenheim issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

11TH BERLIN BIENNALE C/O
MARTIN GROPIUS BAU

Exterior view, Martin Gropius Bau, Photo: Christian Riis Ruggaber

Martin-Gropius-Bau, originally a museum of applied arts and a listed
historical monument since 1966, is a well-known Berlin exhibition
hall located at 7 Niederkirchnerstraße in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Since its inception in the early 1990s, KW Institute for Contemporary
Art has devoted itself to the central questions of our times through
the production, presentation, and dissemination of contemporary
art. The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, which was launched
soon after, emerged from a pressing desire for an extensive dialogue
with the international discourse around contemporary art. In
addition to other venues across the city the Berlin Biennale has been
working with KW’s exhibition space since it’s inauguration.
Numerous outstanding artists and internationally renowned curators
have since realized important new works and exhibition projects
there, establishing the two institutions located under the roof of
KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e. V. as vibrant venues for progressive artistic
practices, both within the Berlin art scene and internationally.

SANDRA GAMARRA HESHIKI

Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Installation view (detail), 11th Berlin Biennale, Gropius Bau,
5.9.–1.11.2020. Photo: Mathias Völzke

eplicating the exhibition logic of a European anthropological
museum, the works from the series The Museum of Ostracism
(2018) display anthropomorphic ceramics of pre-Inca and Inca origin
that seem to be hovering mysteriously in the air. Arranged behind
glass in neat rows, these artifacts are taken from various museums
in Spain—having arrived in these collections through both donation
and plundering. Walking around the showcases, the objects reveal
themselves to be two-dimensional trompe l’oeil paintings that
have been inscribed on the back with words used to pejoratively
designate the Indigenous peoples of South America—a genealogy of
prejudices extending from the conquest to the present day.
Four dusky, atmospheric paintings are shown in dialogue with
this installation. These new works (2020) from the ongoing series
Cryptomnesia (or in some museums the sun never shines) (2015–
ongoing) portray the “scientific” exhibition of non-Western objects at
different European anthropological museums. Emphatically shadowy,
Heshiki’s works are hermetic in mood - rarified objects preserved
but kept in the dark. In an antagonistic gesture, the artist frames the
stillness of these museum views with the violence that surrounds
us: at the corners of each painting are miniature ... (excerpt)

52 WORLD of ART