The Unboxing Experience - Phase 2: Resonating Voices

In the organizer's words:

With the invited contemporary artists: Anna Bochkova I Sara De Brito Faustino I Camille Dumond I Carolin Israel I Shannon Sinclair I Alicja Wysocka

In dialog with works from the collection of the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss: Irma (gen. Moucky) Christiansen-Lippert I Sofia Doclean I Vivian Ellis I Katarzyna Gawłowa I Katharina Grosse I Maria Korsak I Ludmila Prochazkova I Florica Puia | Anna Zomer

This group exhibition focuses on international contemporary women artists, whose works enter into a new, multi-layered and surprising dialog with selected works by women artists from the collection of the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss.

The past and present of the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss have been predominantly in the hands of women - from its founder Pauline Sels to its long-standing female directors. But what does it look like within the collection? In phase 1 of the exhibition project "The Unboxing Experience", the motto was: Lid on, spotlight on! Under the title "Do You See Her?", the two guest curators Lara Bader and Marlene Kurz revealed which works by female artists are slumbering in the depot of the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss. The exhibition was an initial stocktaking - a look at forgotten, overlooked and new positions in the collection. Two central focal points of the collection emerged: so-called naive painting from the 1960s/1970s - i.e. works in a simplified, often childlike formal language by artists without academic training - and color painting from the 1970s to the 2010s.

Following on from this, phase 2 asks the following questions: Are there thematic focuses in the collection - and are young, contemporary positions also interested in them? Where are the similarities and where are the differences? As a result of this investigation, the second exhibition of the work in progress project, entitled "Resonating Voices", is dedicated to the theme of space using selected examples. This theme runs like a common thread through the collection of the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss: as a place, as a concept and as a social projection surface. The focus is on different spatial dimensions: institutional museum space, private and public space and spiritual spaces. Questions of identity, belonging and home are also raised.

The curators have invited international, up-and-coming female artists to bring their works into dialog with the works in the museum collection in order to expand existing discourses and set new focal points. The result is equal juxtapositions and "resonating voices". Resonance - understood as echo, reflection, contradiction or continuation - needs space in order to be heard. In the best case, the museum itself can become a resonating space. The exhibition understands the museum not only as a repository of objects, but also as a lively place of mutual exchange. As the voices of women have historically been given less space, the second part of the exhibition remains true to the original concept: only artworks by women are on display.

"The Unboxing Experience" is curated by Lara Bader and Marlene Kurz, scholarship holders of Residence NRW⁺ 2024/2025. In addition to the project for the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss, the two curators from Germany and Switzerland have been invited to develop and realize an exhibition with the NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein.

The project takes place as part of Residence NRW⁺, a scholarship program for artists and curators that cooperates with various museums, art galleries and art associations throughout NRW. Residence NRW⁺ is a program of the Kunsthalle Münster, an institution of the City of Münster, www.residencenrw.de.

Price information:

Adults 5.00 euros Group adults from 10 persons 3.50 euros per person Reduced 2.50 euros (social welfare recipients and students up to and including 27 years) Group reduced from 10 persons 1.50 euros per person Up to 21 years free Holders of the Art:card Düsseldorf and members of the Museumsverein also have free admission. Free admission for everyone on every 1st Sunday of the month.