Den Frie Udstillingsbygning

GROUND FLOOR AMERICA
July 3rd - August 8th 2010

Curated by: What, How & for Whom (WHW).
Ground Floor America takes its title from a travel book written by the Soviet writers Ilf and Petrov in 1936. Travelling as official Soviet writers through the USA during the Depression, and describing the American culture and way of life with characteristic humour and satirical approach, Ilf and Petrov criticized America as well as Soviet prejudice against 'decadent American capitalism'.

The book "Ground Floor America" is taken as a metaphor to discuss contradictions related to the notion of 'curatorial research', 'cultural translations' and modes of representation. What gets lost, hidden, misinterpreted in the process of the curatorial research? How is it possible to represent local specificities in a global context but avoid producing the cultural 'other'? How can one translate the untranslatable? These are some of the questions the exhibition raises.

What, How & for Whom (WHW) is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia. Its members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. WHW organizes a range of productions, exhibitions and publishing projects. The collective has been running Gallery Nova since 2003, and in 2009 WHW curated 11th Istanbul biennale under the title "What Keeps Mankind Alive?".

Participating artists: VYACHESLAV AKHUNOV • JAWAD AL MALHI • FACTORY OF FOUND CLOTHES • INCI FURNI • ORKHAN HUSEYNOV • TIGRAN KHACHATRYAN •YURI LEIDERMAN • MAHA MAAMOUN • VLADO MARTEK • DARINKA POP-MITIĆ •VAHID SHARIFIAN • ŠKART • JINOOS TAGHIZADEH • GURAM TSIBAKHASHVILI •ALEXANDER UGAY • YELENA & VIKTOR VOROBYEV