Amanda Ross-Ho and Dozie Kanu, installation view of the exhibition Crack Up – Crack Down at Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2020.
Photo: Karolina Zajączkowska. Courtesy of the artist, BQ Berlin and Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle.
The Crack Up – Crack Down exhibition, curated by the Slavs and Tatars art collective and presented for the first time as the main exhibition of the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, was on view as a travelling exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland. In Ljubljana, the exhibition presented 37 artists, but this time, this global overview of satire as a graphic genre was expanded to also include Polish artists. The curators presented a broad spectrum of works by artists from Slovenia, Ukraine, Georgia, Bulgaria, but also China, Iran, UK and the US.
Bitter jokes, teasing drawings, activist interventions, ironic memes. How has humour evolved in recent decades? The Crack Up – Crack Down exhibition by the Slavs and Tatars art collective is about satire: its strengths and its weaknesses.
Satire is equally moralising as it is critical: rampage and subversion are in its nature. It can mock but also terrorise. Humour of course changes with political shifts and technological development. Comedic expression is known to bloom particularly under authoritarian regimes – as was the case with the rich tradition of communist humour in Central and Eastern Europe, or the many examples from the Middle East. Satire can also be a tool of ideology even if it is well-fitted to unmask the mechanisms of authority. In these times of post-truth, it becomes a litmus paper of the public mood.
The exhibition showcased both historical and contemporary works, including artistic interventions, satirical magazines and academic elaborations. Slavs and Tatars have not reduced graphic art to the mere role of a “medium” but have granted it agency.
Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Hamja Ahsan, Pablo Bronstein, Cevdet Erek, Arthur Fournier and Raphael Koenig, Martine Gutierrez, Flaka Haliti, Stane Jagodič, Zhanna Kadyrova, Sachiko Kazama, Dozie Kanu, Ferdinand Kriwet, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Tala Madani, Marlie Mul, Woody De Othello, Alenka Pirman and KULA, Amanda Ross-Ho, Lin May Saeed, Top lista nadrealista, Endre Tot, Anna Uddenberg, Martina Vacheva, Nicole Wermers, Giorgi Xaniashvili, Xiyadie, Honza Zamojski ter Bolesław Chromry, Rafał Dominik, Lubomir Grzelak, Łukasz Kozak, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Jana Shostak and Jakub Jasiukiewicz, Mikołaj Sobczak, Jacqueline Sobiszewski, Justyna Stasiowska, Ewa Tatar and Andrzej Szpindler.
Curators: Slavs and Tatars, Michał Grzegorzek.
Co-producers: MGLC and Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle.