Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies)
Curator Katerina Gregos
On 2 October, the exhibition Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies) curated by Katerina Gregos will open at the Museum für Neue Kunst in Freiburg, Germany. The exhibition is the first major international co-production for Tallinn Art Hall. According to Paul Aguraiuja, Director of Tallinn Art Hall, it is exceptional for an Estonian art institution to initiate and lead the production of an international exhibition which is currently scheduled to be displayed in three countries, while preliminary negotiations have already begun with potential additional exhibition venues. “I believe that this exhibition, in addition to the recent Forbes article, will enhance the image of Tallinn as an emerging centre of contemporary art and will benefit Estonian artists as well as the local exhibition audience. This will help us bring more and more Estonian artists to the international arena and also introduce top contemporary art to the local audience.”
The exhibition Modern Love looks at love and human relations in the current age of the internet, social media and high capitalism – the first age of “cold intimacy”. The exhibition looks at how the digital world, technology giants and neoliberalism have changed love and social relations, while at the same time diluting the separation between the public and the private. The exhibition also looks at how the current issues of time and space have influenced the way we communicate with one another and how the virtual has become entwined with reality. These are still two quite distinct things, although the opposite is announced. Modern Love deals with human pathologies connected to the commodification of feelings and the negative expressions of love (e.g. love for money), and for comparison it also delves into meaningful and transformative forms of love, from the personal to the political. How to restore the place of love as a powerful emotional force and intense psychological bonds, which give meaning to our lives like no other mutually influencing “object” or experience can? How to protect love from the grasp of capital and corporate technology? How to fight against instrumentalisation, superficiality and vulgarity in commerce and social media?
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg (Germany) and IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht (the Netherlands).
At Tallinn Art Hall, the exhibition will be open from 12 June until 5 September 2021.
Curator of the exhibition: Katerina Gregos
Participating artists: Gabriel Abrantes, Hannah Toticki Anbert, Melanie Bonajo, Laura Cemin, Benjamin Crotty, Marijke De Roover, Kyriaki Goni, David Haines, Juliet Jacques, Mahmoud Khaled, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Kyle McDonald, Maria Mavropoulou, Marge Monko, Peter Puklus, Margaret Salmon.
Katerina Gregos is a curator, writer and lecturer based in Brussels. Her curatorial practice explores the relationship between art, society and politics, focusing primarily on democracy, human rights, capitalism, crisis and changing global production cycles. Since 2016 she is curator of the visual arts programme of the Schwarz Foundation (Munich & Athens). Recently she was also the chief curator of the first Riga Biennial (2018), in addition to contributing to its establishment.