Christine Meisner

Extended Drawing, Research-based and Diaspora Art Practices, Master Cycle

Christine Meisner lives and works between Berlin and Brussels. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and has taught from 2004 – 2010 with the lecture series "Suspicious Documentaries" at Technical University Vienna, Institute for Art and Design. At erg, she taught Video and Film from 2013 -2014 with the course "Exercises in Seeing" and has been teaching the MA Drawing class since 2014.

The projects of Christine Meisner are based on extensive transdisciplinary research and intertwine drawing, video, text, photography and music into multilayered installations. For over two decades, the artist has been concerned with the history of imperialistic and ideological regimes and their reappraisal. Central subjects of investigation in her projects are the experiences of diaspora and the origin of group-focused enmity in the context of colonization, nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism. The artist’s graphic archaeologies, archival disclosures, and narrative video and music compositions address the question of what we have become and how we confront the unresolved dimensions of violence that continues to impact us today.

Meisner’s works are exhibited internationally, amongst others at Haus der Kunst, Munich; 11th Berlin Biennial, KW Institute for Contemporary Art; CC Strombeek; Salon Du Dessin Paris; Stevenson Gallery Cape Town; Taipei Biennale, Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Bunkier Sztuki Krakow; La Maison Rouge, Paris; Walther Collection Project Space New York; Centre Pompidou Cinéma Paris; Koldo Mitxelena San Sebastian; Salzburger Kunstverein; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Museion Bozen; 4th Bucharest Biennale; MOMUK Cinema Wien; Galerie Art et Essai Rennes; Extra City Antwerpen; Festival International de Cinéma Marseille; Berlin Documentary Forum 2, Berlin; Victoria & Albert Museum London; Salford Museum and Art Gallery; Musée des Beaux-Arts-Ville Nantes; Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo.

PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS

UNSCHÄRFE IM MÖGLICHEN/UNSHARPNESS IN A POSSIBLE, 2018 – CURRENT

Research, excursion and exhibition project on the origins and continuity of völkisch and anti-Semitic attitudes in German and European society. Or, why so many reader’s letters can be found in the archives of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer and what this has to do with today's hate speech.

UNSHARPNESS IN A POSSIBLE – EPISODE 1: SUBMISSIONS FROM BERLIN, 11th Berlin Biennial

UNSHARPNESS IN A POSSIBLE, Research and Interview

LANDSCAPE, MUSIC AND LIBERTY, 2009 – 2017

Enslavement, segregation, and racism in the USA. Cartographies of resistance of the Underground Railroad. Music as an instrument and as an instrumentalization of freedom.

DISQUIETING NATURE, video music (PW ‘delta’) and exhibition and information at Walther Collection

THE FREEDOM OF, drawings and video music (PW ‘ether’)

WADE IN THE WATER, exhibition of drawings and speech at Extra City

THE PRESENT, 2006 – 2008

Questions of the past in the light of the present. Belgium’s “present” to Congo. Collective memory of colonization and the politics that came afterwards in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

THE PRESENT, videos, narration, drawings, collection MUSEION

DESIGN OF THE IN/HUMAN, exhibition at Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein

THE PRESENT, exhibition at Center for Contemporary Art Warsaw

RANDZONEN DER BILDER,exhibition at Kunsthaus Dresden

WAS GEWORDEN IST/WHAT BECAME, 2003 – 2005

The Transatlantic Slave Trade. What the European intellectuals said about it at that time. The resisting Quilombos of Brazil. The Returnees to Lagos, Nigeria.

QUILOMBOLISATION and PORTRAITS, drawings, collection of Musée d’Arts Nantes

RECOVERY OF AN IMAGE, video tale (PW ‘Esan’), screening at Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein

NOTES FROM THE EMPIRE, exhibition at Kunsthaus Dresden

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS, exhibition at V&A Museum London, 1807 Commemorated

WIRKLICHKEIT OHNE GEWÄHR/REALITY WITHOUT GUARANTEE, 2002 – 2003

Memory of colonization and urban reality in Abidjan and Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire, and Lagos, Nigeria. Drawings, Videos, Photography and Texts.

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES, 2000 - 2002 Spivak, Bhabha and Said and how their ideas and books were (not) to be found in Germany.

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