The Dark Side of White

Curated by Julia Hartmann

Is the colour white “neutral”? In many Western cultures, whiteness is often considered the ideal, the norm, representing cleanliness, innocence or a fresh start. White conveys class and is used as a metaphor for perfection, piousness, and purity, like the proverbial white vest or the trustworthiness of white lab coats. Describing classical sculptures in his books, the German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann established the idea of a white antiquity. He conveyed the idea that a beautiful body appears more beautiful the whiter it is, despite being well aware of the colourfulness of ancient statues. And in the art context, the white cube, well described by Brian O’Doherty, has become the epitome of exhibition spaces, providing the optimal setting for representing artworks. Lastly, white skin has been regarded as superior to people of other racial or ethnic backgrounds, resulting in the ideology of white supremacy.

The exhibition “The Dark Side of White” sheds a critical light on the supposedly “neutral” characteristics of white gallery spaces, clothes, statues, and skin, which have been established through Western-centric and patriarchy-influenced discourses. The show will discuss the consequences of white privilege, power, and dominance in various spheres of life and attempt to dismantle the myths, authority and dominance that the colour white has asserted over the past centuries.

Berni Searle (*1964, South Africa, lives and works in Cape Town)

Snow White, 2001, video, 9 min, loan from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection

Working across photography, video, and installation, South African artist Berni Searle explores the relationships between identity, race, and themes of displacement and loss. The apartheid regime left South Africa with a trauma that cannot be avoided as a context for works by South African artists. Berni Searle takes up the perfidious process of discriminatory classification by making her own body available. Water and flour are trickling down on to her naked body, mingling on her skin to form a pale layer that masks the body but does not paralyse it. In an individual search for what identity can be beyond categorical attributions, Searle’s body provides the factual element to invent herself again.

Christina Werner (*1976, Switzerland, lives and works in Vienna)

The Boys are Back, 2015/2016, video, poster, photograph, magazine, curtain

In “The Boys Are Back”, Christina Werner deals with right-wing European networks and their representation and presence in the media. In essence, the installation alludes to the fragility of democracy in Europe and the constant push by right-wing parties to insert themselves into mainstream politics and society.

Utilising recurring tropes in her photographs and videos, Werner emphasises the historical phenomenon of right-wing protagonists asserting authority through populism, nationalism, and white supremacy by means of propaganda. “The Boys are Back” is a reminder that Europe—and the world—is prone to repeat failures of the past when it comes to its National Socialist history and raises awareness towards the fragility of the European Union in terms of its potential to appoint right-wing protagonists who wish to reinforce white supremacist mindsets.

Egor Kraft (*1986, Russia, lives and works in Vienna)

Content Aware Studies – Deep Portrait, 2019, 12 screens, metal frame, algorithms, custom dataset

Content Aware Studies – Julia Mamea, Caryatid Portrait, and Augmented Hercules, 2019, Crema marfil marble, polyamide, algorithms

Egor Kraft’s “Content Aware Studies” series is comprised of ideas, AI experiments, objects, moving image works, films and essays. It inquires how the use of machine learning in historical analysis and reproduction as a scientific tool brings to the forefront ethical questions of bias contamination within data and automation of its analysis. The works operated on the datasets primarily comprised of the findings archived and documented in repositories of natural history museum collections. The objects from the CAS series came through methodologies developed with data scientists and based on training artificial neural networks aiming to replenish lost fragments of antique sculptures, friezes and other objects. In the context of the exhibition, Kraft’s works question the myths of a “white antiquity” that the Western art canon has established. Since the Renaissance, we’re used to seeing ancient statues made only out of white marble, but not colourfully painted as they were originally—mainly described by Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In this way, the idea of “clean” statues and a pristine beauty has been established over centuries.

Abiona Esther Ojo (*1992, Austria, lives and works in Vienna)

Whisper from the dark / Ein Flüstern aus meinem tiefsten Unterbauch, 2023, artificial hair, wire, beads

“The sculpture ‘Whisper from the dark’ was born out of a desire to establish a deeper connection with my intuition. Intuition is a kind of power source from which all ideas spring—a subtle guidance system that comes from the depths of a self. I questioned my intuition about what should emerge and listened to the quiet voice: the creature that emerged from this dialogue shaped me as much as I shaped it. It shows different faces depending on how you look at it. It’s a wig that unfolds through my engagement with it and the potential for transformation.

Possibilities and ways of interpretation are revealed when one engages with the sculpture and its power—it symbolises that in not knowing, lies comfort and power at the same time.” Abiona Esther Ojo

Lisl Ponger (*1947, Germany, lives and works in Vienna)

Garden Party, 2016, light box, analogue C-print on Duratrans

With many of Christopher Columbus’ voyages—who we see at a seemingly casual garden party—destruction, imperialism, as well as ethnology and anthropology took their beginnings. In a grand pose, Columbus points into the future, surrounded by a group of scientists, like Bronisław Malinowski, Franz Boas and Margaret Mead—all three of them conducted significant work in the field of anthropology between 1910 and 1970, studying the behaviour of indigenous peoples in “exotic” places like Oceania, New Guinea, or Samoa. In “Garden Party” we gaze on an all-white, all-in-white gathering that represents outdated thoughts of domination and privilege over other cultures—or rather questions the so-called “white-saviour complex”.

Letícia Ramos (*1976, Brazil, lives and works in São Paulo)

Solar Wind, 2012, video HD, animation, transferred by Polaroid, courtesy Mendes Wood DM

“Solar Wind” is inspired by the Beaufort Scale (a measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land) and its peculiar visual descriptions of the wind’s effects. To develop it, Letícia Ramos built her own camera for the production of films and went on a research trip to the North Pole. The equipment was based on the first wooden submarines, the first polar explorations and on Polaroid technology. With three Polaroid cameras, the artist captured the Arctic landscape, putting the photographs together to make this video. Under the supernatural interference of the low northern lights, the high frequencies of blues and greens in the landscape caused the camera to autonomously capture effects like Super-8 sci-fi photography. Even though the figure of the explorers is missing in this video, we see the desired landscapes of their expeditions.

Lucas Gabellini-Fava (*1997, UK, lives and works in London)

Photographs Also Die, 2023, aluminium, screenprinted reinforced glass, LED lights, and coloured gels

“Photographs Also Die” attempts an unbiased reading of a single photograph. The work acts as a distillation of a found image into text, which relies on the interpretation of the three individuals that were chosen to undertake the task. By using participants from varying backgrounds, a new perspective is introduced that disrupts the assumed importance and neutrality attributed to a photograph. Each one represents a subjective understanding of the image, allowing us to consider the varied lenses through which we view the world. The use of cyan, magenta and yellow lights makes reference to the darkroom—a space where paper is exposed to light, chemicals and colour. Here, though, the chemical and material transformation is echoed by the interplay of glass, ink and light. The work questions the neutrality of visual representation and engages with text as a means to challenge myths and authority associated with the colour white. “Photographs Also Die” is an invitation to explore the shadows, complexities, and nuances inherent in photography while simultaneously disrupting the pristine whiteness of the gallery space.

Bronwyn Lace (*1980, Botswana, lives and works in Vienna and South Africa)

Dominus Dominoes, 2023, responsive film oration, performance during the opening

When the French Roman Catholic missionary priest Francis Aupiais was sent by the Society of African Missions to Dahomey (now Benin) in the early 1900s he discovered it was difficult to capture people’s interest in Catholicism. It is said that Zounon Medjé, the Vodun King of the Night, advised him to adapt his mass to resemble local traditions and customs. In this 30-minute performance Bronwyn Lace responds to a film created by Aupiais in January 1930; it shows the Epiphany Festival being celebrated in the Beninese city of Porto Novo. 50 years later and 7000 km across the African continent, in rural Botswana, Lace was born and at just over a month old cast as baby Jesus in the same festival. Having recently returned from a research trip following Aupiais’s journey, Lace now shares a series of mistranslations, misinterpretations and slipped meanings that have informed her understanding of self.

Film credit: Collection Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine