Artist: Ad Minoliti
Exhibition title: Coven
Curated by: Marie Himmerich
Venue: Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany
Date: June 23 – July 27, 2018
Photography: © Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 2018. Photos: Karolina Sobel
With “Coven” the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden presents the first institutional solo exhibition of Argentine artist Ad Minoliti (born 1980 in Buenos Aires) in Germany.
Ad Minoliti’s work revolves around the relationships between the tradition of abstract painting, (interior) design and gender. Part of her artistic strategy is the imagination of a queer, parallel universe, which she reflects in a reinterpretation of art-historical as well as social conventions. To this end, the artist appropriates the geometric formal language of modernism: Once the bearer of utopian life plans, with Minoliti’s work this culminates in a cheerful feminist project.
Playing the semantical layers of its title, “Coven” refers to a new chapter in the serial exhibition practice of the artist by highlighting a feminine sense of community together with the rejection of normative ideas of body and (sexual) identity. As a temporal encounter of motifs and aesthetic strategies, the show combines new prints from Minoliti’s Queer Deco-series (since 2012) and a video (Presentation, 2015) in front of a mural that replaces the museum’s space with the artist’s own alusive interpretation system. Circle, triangle and rectangles cite the design of a Japanese tofu packaging and transform the white cube into a living character, joined by a blue cat. A green hand, symbol of the abortion-rights movement in Argentina, at the same time refers to the colouring of monsters and aliens in cartoons and sci-fi culture. A play of aesthetic and popular cultural signs, of quotations of form and media takes its course.
Ad Minoliti (*1980 in Buenos Aires) lives and works in Argentina. She has had solo shows at Galería Agustina Ferreyra, Mexico City, Peres Projects, Berlin and has been participating in group shows at the Whitney Museum, New York, La Maison Rouge, Paris, or Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria.
