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Mariechen Danz Womb Tomb Thema active 2014 2015 Foto Paula Winkler Mariechen Danz Womb Tomb Thema active 2014 2015 Foto Paula Winkler
Mariechen Danz Womb Tomb Thema active 2014 2015 Foto Paula Winkler

Mariechen Danz

Art exhibition of Ruhrfestspiele at Kunsthalle Recklinghausen

In 2020 the Ruhrfestspiele art exhibition celebrates its 70th anniversary and invites Mariechen Danz, the youngest visual artist in the festival exhibition to date.

Danz's work takes communication and the transfer of knowledge as its point of departure, placing the body at the centre of her process-based practice. With her sculptures, drawings, costumes and performances she explores the possibilities of expression but also the limitations of language, the legibility of signs and their hierarchical systems. Again and again, Danz’s artistic discourse revolves around the subjectivity of all human understanding, replacing one-dimensional explanatory models with empathy and curiosity.

With decolonial approaches, Mariechen Danz shakes up Eurocentric images of history and values and mixes up the drawers with which we decisively order and control our world. In this way, firm boundaries disappear and give way to a continuous learning process. For Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Mariechen Danz designs rooms in which she orchestrates her work in a stage-like manner and at the same time transforms and opens the architecture of the building, actively involving the audience is. Danz's incitement to communication and dialogue seems highly topical in view of populist power strategies and the disappearance of the threat of social empathy.

Mariechen Danz was born in 1980 in Dublin, Ireland. She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, and the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been shown at the Venice and Istanbul Biennials, Haus der Kunst, Munich, MAK - Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Kunsthaus Bregenz and New Museum, New York. Today Mariechen Danz lives and works in Berlin.

Exhibition period: 02 May to 14 June 2020

Opening hours: Tuesdays to Sundays (incl. Public Holidays), 11:00am to 6:00pm

An admission ticket to Ruhrfestspiele performances on the same day entitles the holder to visit the exhibition free of charge. Tickets for the exhibition can only be purchased at Kunsthalle.