The exhibition entitled “Curvature of Events” curated by Ethiopian anthropologist Meskerem Assegued, Director of Zoma Contemporary Art Center, which was on show at the State Art Collections Dresden (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) last year, opens this week at the Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa.

The State Art Collections Dresden in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Sub-Sahara Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa, invited Ethiopian curator Meskerem Assegued to Dresden. The purpose of the visit was to do research and to develop a concept for an exhibition to be shown at the Albertinum.

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Meskerem Assegued initiated “Curvature of Events”, a video art exhibition, based on pieces she selected from the permanent collections at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery), the Galerie Neue Meister (New Master’s Gallery) and the Skulpturensammlung (Sculpture Collection) dating from the mid-1500s to the early 1900s but excluding the last 100 years from 1914 to 2014.

The exhibition is a window into the way Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic artists depicted their society and how artists of our time interpret that perception relating it to the present. The curator’s selection and interpretation of the pieces is influenced by a different cultural background than the artists who created them. The curator invited three video artists to look at the selected works and to choose those that interested them most. The video artists used modern media to create a contemporary reaction to art from an earlier time.

Meskerem Assegued’s curatorial career goes back over twenty years. During the last sixteen years she has curated several exhibitions in Europe, Africa and North America. She is interested in contemporary artistic expressions that deal with historical and socio-cultural contexts. She believes all social issues are relevant everywhere regardless of socio-political, socio-economic and geographical differences.

“Curvature of Events” is an interpretation and analysis of European art history based on few selected pieces from thousands that have been attracting curators for many years. The contemporary video artists for this exhibition are Gunter Deller (*1963 in Wasserlos), Barbara Lubich (*1977 in Trento, Italien) and Abel Tilahun (*1983 in Ethiopia). A dance performance choreographed by Christian Canciani from Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden will be incorporated as part of the exhibition.

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