MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

The exhibition Monoculture – A Recent History approaches monoculture, or ‘cultural homogeneity’, from various historical, social and ideological perspectives, as well as philosophical and linguistic ones. As a museum for art and visual culture, M HKA has looked at many different case studies from approximately the last one hundred years in order to consider the impetus for monoculture or the monocultural self-image, and how this has been reflected in artistic work as well as in propaganda and philosophical thought. Seeking as much as possible to consider monoculture not as something exclusively conservative or right-wing, the exhibition rather considers it as something that can be found across social and ideological partialities. With the inclusion of ambiguity, artistically and philosophically-speaking, this exhibition also wishes to look at what ways of living or perceiving might be excluded by the formation of a monoculture. Monoculture – A Recent History asks questions on what kind of society and cultural space we want, taking into account human subjectivity along with its great capacities of creativity and empathy.

Artists include: Hannah Höch, Lovis Corinth, Karl Hofer, George Grosz, Carol Rama, Werner Peiner, Belgian Institute for World Affairs, Joseph Beuys, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Andy Warhol, Nicole, Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Haseeb Ahmed, Sven Augustijnen, Candida Höfer, Papa Ibra Tall, Maryam Najd, David Blandy, Oxana Shachko, Matti Braun, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Luc Deleu, Jimmie Durham, Catherine Opie, Charlotte Posenenske, Public Movement, Philip Guston, Mladen Stilinović, N. S. Harsha, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Rasheed Araeen, Ibrahim Mahama, Kerry James Marshall, Vincent Meessen, Renzo Martens/CATPC, Danny Matthys, Jonas Staal, Sille Storihle, Makhmut Usmanovich Usmanov, Nicoline van Harskamp, Dimitri Venkov, Plus artefacts from several cultural archives: the Arthur Langerman Archives for Research into Visual Anti-Semitism (ALAVA), and the cultural archives of Flanders: AMSAB – Institute for Social History; the Liberal Archive; KADOC Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society; and ADVN – Archive and Research Centre for Flemish Nationalism.