Animism

Modernity through the Looking Glass

September 16, 2011 - January 29, 2012
Animism is a multipart exhibition project; after episodes in Antwerp and Berne, it is now on display at the Generali Foundation/Vienna. The exhibition Animism. Modernity through the Looking Glass takes up the current broad-based reassessment of modernity, examining the ethnological conception of animism as it was framed in the context of colonialism as well as the concept of animism in psychoanalysis.



In Vienna, the city of Sigmund Freud, one focus of the exhibition is on aesthetic approaches that subject the distinction between the psychological “inside” world and the material “outside” world to critical scrutiny.
The many works in the exhibition use a variety of media and heterogeneous strategies to trace lines of demarcation, thresholds, and transitions across the canonical divisions, displacing, exaggerating, and transforming them. Animism. Modernity through the Looking Glass suggests a revision and decolonization of not only our traditional understanding of animism but also the modern imaginary it articulates.
generali foundation