Schriftzug: "Fot those who have dared the forbidden fruit, and drink from the forsaken river"

ULTRASANITY. On Madness, Sanitation, Antipsychiatry and Resistance

An exhibition at ifa Gallery Berlin, 14 December 2019 to 9 February 2020

Opening: 13 December 2019, 19.00, ifa Gallery Berlin
                 14 December 2019, 19.00, SAVVY Contemporary

Berlin, 4 December 2019 – The new exhibitions ULTRASANITY. On Madness, Sanitation, Antipsychiatry and Resistance challenge Western scientific methods and perspectives on mental health, and question medical (mis)conceptions of psychopathologies by situating them in the context of coloniality, racialisation, objectification, and patriarchal oppression. This project confronts us again with traumas and fears of displacement and contamination. Beyond a romanticisation of madness, we seek to address the heuristic and generative potential of certain forms of delirium. Beyond that we want to grant fundamental significance to community engagement and to spiritual, systemic, intra-generational histories in formulating healing strategies.
 
Over the course of one year, SAVVY Contemporary collaborated with clinicians, artists, patients, cognitive scientists, scholars and practitioners, interrogating different grammars of violence inscribed in universal therapeutic models and the pharmacologisation of care still practiced today.
 
Addressing the claustrophobic structures of discipline imposed on us by society and in particular by educational systems, the different works installed at ifa Gallery Berlin deal with the possibility of challenging and dismantling contrivances of control and apparatus of confinement through the poeisis of collective engagement.

A project by SAVVY Contemporary in collaboration with ifa Gallery Berlin, the Association of Neuroesthetics, the Gnaoua Festival (Morocco) and Picha Art Lubumbashi (DRC)
 
Curators: Elena Agudio and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Co-curator: Kelly Krugman
 
Artists ifa Gallery Berlin, Linienstraße 139/140, 10115
Leo Asemota, Virginia Chihota, Jaswant Guzder, Eva Kotatkova and Tracey Rose
14.12.2019–09.02.2020
 
Artists SAVVY Contemporary, Plantagenstraße 31, 13347 Berlin
John Akomfrah, Ulf Aminde, Yassine Balbzioui, M’Barek Bouhchichi, Virginia Chihota, Larisa Crunțeanu, Alessandra Eramo, Lukas Hofmann, Immy Mali, Teresa Margolles, Nathalie Mazeas, Lavar Munroe, Adjani Okpu-Egbe, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Javier Tellez
15.12.2019–26.01.2020


Information on the exhibition and requests for interviews:
Ev Fischer, +49 (0)30 284491 57,  ifa-galerie-berlin(at)ifa.de

Press contact:
Guido Jansen-Recken, +49 (0)30 284491 19, presse(at)ifa.de

ifa Gallery Berlin, Linienstraße 139/140, 10115 Berlin
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 14.00 - 18.00

Closed on mondays and bank holidays and 21.12.2019–02.01.2020

The project is funded by the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes), the Foundation of Arts Initiative, and Association of Neuroesthetics (AoN Berlin).

About ifa
ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) is Germany’s oldest intermediary organisation for international cultural relations, having celebrated its centenary in 2017. It promotes a peaceful and en¬riching coexistence between people and cultures worldwide. ifa supports artistic and cultural exchange in exhibition, dialogue and conference programmes, and it acts as a centre of excellence for international cultural relations. It is part of a global network and relies on sustainable, long-term partnerships.

It is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the state of Baden-Württemberg and its capital Stuttgart. www.ifa.de/en