Annie Goodner
picks November 21, 2022
"In the Shadows of Tall Necessities"
Questions of care—as a responsibility and a right—reverberate throughout this group exhibition at Bonner Kunstverein, cocurated by the museum's director, Fatima Hellberg, and the artist Annika Eriksson. The politics and practices of care have been central to Hellberg's curatorial approach and what she calls "keeping something alive" that otherwise shouldn't be. This is a vision that frames Hellberg and Eriksson's ongoing collaboration, informed in part by their relationship as daughter and mother, respectively. Persistence and survival animate the seventeen-artist show, which unfolds in veiled
Shirley Bassey's 1971 soul ballad "(Where Do I Begin) Love Story" echoes throughout "Omweg" (a shared Dutch and Afrikaans word meaning something akin to "detour"), Moshekwa Langa's first major solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The artist has spliced together the song's surging string-and-brass overture with a loop of the title refrain as part of his 2001 video work Where Do I Begin, which was shot in his birthplace of Bakenberg in South Africa's Limpopo province. Here, passengers in floral skirts and polished shoes are filmed from the knee down as they gingerly board a regional bus. This