Am 5. Mai eröffnet Judith Raum ihre Einzelausstellung disestablishim PAVILLON in Lucca, Italien. Das Non-profit-Projekt für zeitgenössische Kunst bietet mit Ausstellungen, Lectures, Kollaborationen und anderen Werkzeugen künstlerischer Forschung eine Plattform für die Verbreitung von künstlerischen Praktiken, Ideen und Projekten von internationalem Interesse.

Ausstellung: 5. Mai bis 5. Juli 2012
Ort: Pavillon | Prêt à migrér
Via A. Mordini n° 64 (già Via Nuova), 55100 Lucca, Italien
http://www.pavillonsocial.com/

Es folgt der englische Pressetext.

In Europe of the Middle Ages, Lucca was the most important center for silk industry. Companies from Lucca, such as the “Guinigi”, were engaged in international commercial and banking activities, reaching as far as the Orient and Northern Europe. They financed the Crowns of England, France and Burgundy, just to name a few. Upon the death of the Duke of Burgundy, a merchant from Lucca was in charge of the funeral procession from Hal to Dijon. Along the entire route of theprocession, churches were decorated with black drapes carrying golden braiding from Lucca.
With her presentation at Pavillon, located in direct neighborhood of the Guinigi (one of the largest corporations of the past), Judith Raum*, through the lens of the textile industry in Lucca, looks at the early development of the first economic structures from which capitalism originated.
Silk and textile industry in general were the most important fields of production. At the time, commercial and financialactivities of global scale were linked to local structures of production and politics based on the exploitation of both subordinate and artisan labour.
However, it was not in Lucca but in Florence that in 1378 the first revolt of textile workers took place. In the “Revolt of the Ciompi” (from the word “ciompo” or beggar) the workers of the wool industry claimed their right to associate in unions, demanding true political representation and cancellation of debts.
The workers from Lucca would revolt two centuries later, around May 1531. When the ruling classes unloaded the costs of a financial crisis on the workers and their families, the workers stood up under the banner of a tattered black fabric – again a fabric. “The Revolt of the Beggars” stems from this historical incident. Among the demands of the Ciompi was the abolition of the controller, or “checker” in English – which can be associated with the ordered structure of a checkerboard grid. For the title of her show, Judith Raum reduced “disestablish the checker” to disestablish (or destabilize, overthrow).

In her earlier works, the artist has explored the relationship between Germany and Turkey in the nineteenth century and the German financial imperialism linked to the construction of the Ottoman Railway, used as a bridgehead for economic and business development.
For example, German textile products were sold in Anatolia as local products. The railroad was the instrument (among other tools, equipment and intangible assets) used to colonialize space and minds. Together with the organization of work, a strive for profit, functionality, efficiency, etc., it created the framework for a molding of the local landscape and its inhabitants into the new global economic outlook.

In her first solo show in Italy, Judith Raum shows large, white, silkscreen-printed fabrics as well as paintings with depictions of fights between animals, taken from sumptuous silks of fourteenth century Lucca. Conflicts, hunting scenes, predators and prey, dominated and subjugated. Presented in combination with works on paper, research material, texts and writings by Nicholas Rodolico on the “Revolt of the Ciompi“, the fabrics become precursors of modern political banners.

* Judith Raum, Germany, 1977, lives and works in Berlin