Surprising Tehran
Günther Uecker exhibition will focus on human rights abuses
By Gareth Harris. Web only
Published online: 08 August 2012
In a surprise move, an exhibition focusing on human rights
abuses is due to open at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art next month. The
show, dedicated to the German sculptor and kinetic artist Günther Uecker,
includes 14 works from the series "The Human Abused: 14 Pacified
Implements", which was commissioned in 1992 by the Berlin-based Institute
for Foreign Cultural Relations (IFA), a cultural organisation funded by the
German government. The use of violence against foreigners based in Germany
"In these works, [Uecker] expresses his visions of
life and life's suffering and tries to reveal, in his sensitive setting of
signs, basic human drives: aggression, injury, destruction, setting against
them gestures of reconciliation," says the institute's website, adding
that the "injury of human being by human being" is the focus of the
series. The works are based on the Stations of the Cross. These elements of
Christian iconography may, however, raise eyebrows in the Iranian capital.
The exhibition (16 September-31 October) is also due to
include 88 works provided by the artist who joined the Zero Group in 1961, an
avant-garde Düsseldorf-based collective that declared art should be ultra
minimalist, starting from "point zero". The show is funded by IFA,
the German Embassy, the Goethe-Institut and the German publishing company Geuer
& Breckner.
The Uecker exhibition is the latest in a series of shows
devoted to German modern and contemporary artists to be held at the Tehran
Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2008, for instance, the Iranian authorities held
an exhibition of works by the late expressionist artists Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst
Barlach at the museum.
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