nGbK: 'Tagore's Post Office', exhibition curated by Grant Watson (tutor at DAI) With contributions by Anna Boghiguian, The Otolith Group, Landings (Natasha Ginwala, Vivian Ziherl), Goshka Macuga and the 'Tagore, Pedagogy and Contemporary Visual Cultures network'
Opening Friday, 28 March 2014, 7pm at nGbK
Tagore's Post Office departs from the work and the ideas of poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore (Kolkata, 1861–1941) one of India's leading figures of the early twentieth century. Tagore was the first Asian Nobel Laureate for literature and is considered the most influential Indian poet of modernity, a pioneer in education, modern Indian art and of the country's independence. A popular figure in Europe and in particular in Germany during the 1920s, today Tagore is less known outside of his home country.
Tagore's Post Office looks again at Tagore's legacy. His approach to art and culture as well as subjects including ecology, education and cosmopolitanism, his critique of nationalism and his concept of the universal, compel our interest and demand to be translated into contemporary terms. By bringing together artistic works and research, the exhibition features responses to Tagore's legacy often from unexpected or heterodox positions and suggests how his work and ideas still resonate as well as antagonize.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by Tagore's play The Post Office (Bengali: Dagkhar), dating from 1912, which reveals in an exemplary and allegorical fashion many of Tagore's central concerns.
The exhibition is curated by Grant Watson, and organised by the nGbK project group "Ausstellungsübernahmen" (Elke Falat, Claudia Hummel, Katja Jedermann, Ulrike Jordan, Antje Weitzel). The various elements of the exhibition are brought together in a design by architect Andreas Müller.
Tagore's Post Office is a cooperation between neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), and integrates the exhibition Tagore's Universal Allegories initiated and organised by Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), London, curated by Grant Watson in 2013.
Tagore's Post Office is financed by the Lotto-Stiftung Berlin, and supported by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa).The accompanying public forum Tagore, pedagogy and contemporary visual cultures network is supported by Iniva with funding of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
nGbK - Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst
Oranienstraße 25
10999 Berlin
(DAI is a partner in the 'Tagore, Pedagogy and Contemporary Visual Cultures network')
