The group show organised by The Foundation for Art and Culture, Bonn, will be presented at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow from 11 November 2020, before moving onto venues in Berlin and Paris.
At the head of the international curatorial committee are Chairman of The Foundation for Art and Culture, Walter Smerling, and General Director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova. They will oversee participating artists including Olafur Eliasson, Mona Hatoum and Wolfgang Tillmans, who will unite to form the many amazing geographical, social, political and cultural landscapes Europe has to offer.
Slavs and Tatars's Mystical Protest (2011). Installation view at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2016 Photo: Bartosz Górka. Diversity United. A joint exhibition by Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and Foundation for Art and Culture, Bonn. www.stiftungkunst.de
Tackling topics of overriding social and artistic significance, such as freedom, dignity, conflict, (mental) landscapes and identity, Diversity United presents a survey of contemporary European art following the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 20th Century. It seeks to highlight the importance of a united Europe in times of political uncertainty, underlining the importance of intercultural dialogue by presenting “a broad panorama of different artistic approaches, a chorus of voices which encourages visitors to think, to analyse, to discuss, to feel compassion or experience deep emotions - thus rendering the human in a world which sometimes appears hostile to humanistic values”, in the words of Zelfira Tregulova.
In addition to championing the values required for the preservation of diversity, Walter Smerling elaborates on the didactic aspect of the exhibition, explaining that “the artists also demonstrate how fragile these values are, and how much we must support them.”
Full list of participating artists:
Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Andreas Angelidakis, Yael Bartana, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, Georg Baselitz, Blue Soup, Christian Boltanski,Monica Bonvicini, Pavel Brăila, Maurizio Cattelan, Olga Chernysheva, Tacita Dean, Rineke Dijkstra, Aleksandra Domanović, Constant Dullaart, Olafur Eliasson, Kristaps Epners, Valérie Favre, Aslan Gaisumov, Adrian Ghenie, Gilbert & George, Antony Gormley, Manuel Graf, Ane Graff, Petrit Halilaj, Mona Hatoum, Sheila Hicks, Sanja Iveković, Isaac Julien, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Zhanna Kadyrova, Patricia Kaersenhout, Šejla Kamerić, Erik Kessels & Thomas Mailaender, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Kogler, Alicja Kwade, Kris Lemsalu, Cristina Lucas, Goshka Macuga, Kris Martin, Dóra Maurer, Annette Messager, Marzia Migliora, Boris Mikhailov, Richard Mosse, Henrike Naumann, Mariele Neudecker, Katja Novitskova, Ahmet Öğüt, Roman Ondak, Lucy Orta, Dan Perjovschi, Grayson Perry, Anders Petersen, Agnieszka Polska, Tal R, Paula Rego, Gerhard Richter, Ugo Rondinone, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Adam Saks, Anri Sala, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Tristan Schulze, Katharina Sieverding, Slavs and Tatars, Nedko Solakov, Jan Svenungsson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Tatiana Trouvé, Luc Tuymans, Martina Vacheva, Ulla von Brandenburg, Marko Vuokola, Rachel Whiteread, Per Wizén, Erwin Wurm, Nil Yalter and Yan Pei-Ming
