?Hypocrisy: the site specificity of morality? has been curated as a conventional, thematic, international group exhibition. With its origin in the Africa in Oslo project, it takes for granted that African artist are a part of an international art world and that their creative interrogation of politics, economics and culture, aligns them to a new global coalition that has cast aside geographic divisions, or artistic identities bounded by nationality.
In essence this conventional curation is self critical and unconventional because it questions why, over the past decades artists from outside Western Europe and the US were not an accepted part of international group shows. It underlines the theme of hypocrisy within the art world itself.
The curators Stina Högkvist and Koyo Kouoh did not wish to put together a specifically African contemporary art exhibition. Early in the process they became interested in the site-specific hypocritical aspects of morality; a form of contemporary imperialism, which is not a purely geographic imperialism but one that is carried out through an imperialistic attitude that shows itself as superiority, suppression and dominance of people, a chauvinism and a behaviour that refers to some people as of a lower social, political or artistic level. This tendency appears to have escalated in late-capitalism, where the idea that everything, including subjectivity, is for sale seems to flourish. The artists with whom they have chosen to collaborate tackle these issues in different ways, from different perspectives and from different parts of the world. Global consumer society, pollution, loss of the self, political double standards and exoticism soon appeared as undercurrents to the bigger theme of hypocrisy.
Participating artists
Olaf Breuning (Switzerland), Georges Adeagbo (Benin), Georges Osodi (Nigeria), Marianne Heier (Norway), Wilfredo Prieto (Cuba), Gunilla Klingberg (Sverige), El Parche (Norway, Namibia, Colombia), Moshekwa Langa (South Africa), Steve McQueen (Great Britain), Pascal Marthine Tayou (Cameroon)
Curators: Stina Högkvist (NMFK) och Koyo Kouoh (freelance curator, Dakar, Senegal)
The exhibition is part of the bigger project "Africa in Oslo".