See/Change
Art Collection Deutsche Börse @ 25

15 to 19 May 2024
Somerset House, Embankment West, Photo London
“See/Change – Art Collection Deutsche Börse @25” brings together ten contemporary artistic positions that critically reflect on poignant matters of our time – ranging from visual meditations on environmental and climate change to community activism, and complex politics of migration, transformation and selfhood. Each project offers a unique perspective on the central theme of the collection, the “conditio humana”: an exploration of the varied conditions of human existence and its position in the world. The curated selection is drawn from the Foundation’s recent acquisitions for the Art Collection Deutsche Börse. In the spirit of cooperation, dialogue and diversity – the three guiding principles of the anniversary year – the exhibition is curated by Anne-Marie Beckmann, Curator of the Art Collection together with independent curator and scholar Renée Mussai, advisory board member of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.
Collectively and individually, the artists explore essential questions of identity, freedom and visibility, especially the representation of socially marginalised and prejudiced communities, as seen in the defiant youth in the Parisian “banlieues” in Mohamed Bourouissa’s large-scale photographs, the cosmos of young women and girls in Turkey’s Koran schools in Sabiha Çimen’s colour works, or the ordeals of Eritrean migrants in Aida Silvestri’s mixed media portraits. In their respective long-term projects, Sim Chi Yin and Anastasia Samoylova thematise the increasingly devastating effects of global climate emergency and its ecological impact on the environment, both natural and human-made. Such geopolitical tenets of crisis also resonate in Philip Montgomery’s black and white photography, which holds up a harsh mirror to the reality of unequal opportunities, racial discrimination and societal turmoil in the United States. Vanessa Winship’s examination of the US today is no less ambivalent, if less stark, in her portrayal of the transient and continuously changing nature of landscape and the people within it. While Sabelo Mlangeni and Daniel Jack Lyons contemplate marginality, indigeneity and identity in relation to queer rural communities in South Africa and in the Brazilian Amazon, Marvel Harris’ autobiographical work conveys his lived experience as a non-binary transgender person with autism – a journey of transformation both deeply personal and universally human.
The artists shown are: Mohamed Bourouissa, Sabiha Çimen, Sim Chi Yin, Marvel Harris, Daniel Jack Lyons, Sabelo Mlangeni, Philip Montgomery, Anastasia Samoylova, Aida Silvestri and Vanessa Winship.