The Life of Things
Looted – Displaced – Salvaged | Venue: former Marktrichterhaus [Market Reeve’s House], Lauffen near Bad Ischl

The exhibition uses contemporary perspectives to shed light on the fate of artworks and artefacts amidst looting, removal and restitution. The spectrum of works ranges from an exploration of colonial looting and in some cases dubious collecting activities, state-organised art theft and expropriation in the Third Reich, to cultural genocide through the removal and destruction of cultural treasures.

Systematic art theft is a phenomenon familiar since ancient times. It is not only a strategy for transferring objects of value, but also a means of legitimising cultural dominance. Often, it is only the more spectacular cases, such as those involving a high monetary value, that attract public attention. The focus of this exhibition deliberately concentrates on the immaterial value of objects, the memories, history and stories that have been inscribed in them: the dignity of the object and the societies that have lost these objects that shape their identity.

The artists featured in the exhibition provide inspiration for new strategies on how museums and collections can deal with this burdened heritage in order that they might ful l their responsibility between restitution and the preservation of our cultural heritage.

With the artists:

Said Baalbaki, Maeve Brennan, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, CATPC / Renzo Martens, Ines Doujak, Assaf Hinden, Moussa Kone, Oliver Laric, Nii Kwate Owoo, Markus Proschek, Michael Rakowitz, Anja Ronacher, Dierk Schmidt, Philip Topolovac

Curators: Markus Proschek and Hemma Schmutz
Exhibition Design: Klemen Breitfuss and Julian Brües

Cooperation

An exhibition of the Lentos Art Museum Linz on the occasion of the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024. With the support of the Cultural Heritage Project by Peter Löw.