18 Nov 2016

NOUVELLES DE L'ILE DES BIENHEUREUX

The exhibition examines the construction of an Austrian national identity and the intermediary role it plays between East and West against the backdrop of the specific historical situation in the Austrian-Hungarian multi-ethnic state. The cultural interconnectedness of the various territories as well as the migratory movements brought about by a range of social conditions are to be considered using a selection of examples from the 19th century until today. The dualism of absorbing cultural influences on the one hand, and, on the other, nationalisms associated with the exclusion and stigmatization of minorities can be applied to the present-day political debate on borders and cultural identities in Europe.
The ethnographic interest in the inhabitants of the various crown lands of the Habsburg Empire was founded on the need to represent and define the geographically widely dispersed nations and regional population groups as part of the 'big whole.'

In the exhibition, several items from the nineteenth century (such as the Habsburg double-headed eagle made from Bohemian glass beads, or the photographs of Viennese Andreas Groll) represent this period, which came to an end with the defeat of the Habsburg monarchy in the First World War and the subsequent foundation of the First Austrian Republic in 1919.
The exhibition spans a wide arc, from the nineteenth century until today, and examines, among other things, the degree to which Austria can in fact be thought of as a 'happy island,' as Pope Paul VI termed it during a 1971 Vatican visit of then Federal President Franz Jonas (the Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky later reformulated this as 'the island of the blessed'). The island concept can be understood not only as a community that shuts itself off from external influences (in the sense of an island mentality), but also as a refuge.
Many works in the exhibition reflect the arbitrariness of borders and national attributes, the driving forces behind immigration and emigration as well as state-organized or individual manifestations of national identity or identities in the form of symbols, objects, images, and films. Other works focus on the psychological and introspective aspects of identity. Of course, this exhibition does not claim to present a comprehensive historical overview, but rather attempts from an artistic point of view to provide insights into the complex and controversial history and present-day reality of a country that owes its cultural richness not least to the co-existence and co-mingling of different languages, religions, and cultures.

Johann Fischbach (1797-1871), Andreas Groll (1812 - 1872), Rudolf Koppitz (1884-1936), Anna Koppitz (1895 – 1989), Zbyněk Sekal (1923-1998), František Lesák (*1943), Seiichi Furuya (*1950), Carla Åhlander (*1966), Gernot Wieland (*1968), Ramesch Daha (*1971), Cäcilia Brown (*1983), Michèle Pagel (*1985).

Curated by Bettina Klein



_{With the support of the Consulat d'Autriche à Strasbourg.}