Jimmie Durham: Maquette For A Museum of Switzerland

Wed Mar 7—Sun Apr 15 2012

Jimmie Durham, Maquette for a Museum of Switzerland, installation view, 2011. Courtesy Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst Zurich and Opdahl Gallery Berlin/Stavanger.

The work of Native American artist Jimmie Durham (b.1940, lives in Berlin, Germany) is manifold–as poet, former activist, essayist, and sculptor he deftly mines the fields of art and political reality, infiltrating culture industries in ways that are both ironic and ambivalent. The contemporary work of Durham plays upon the construction and build up of a “postmodern savage.” Durham’s Maquette for a Museum of Switzerland is a sincere, institutional-like setting.Containing objects, masks, photos as well as texts by the artist, it questions national clichés and symbols.

Durham says that “Switzerland is a unique and exotic enclave of 'a', more than 'anti-' European culture. Its native arts and festivals have been largely hidden even within the country. “Maquette for a Museum of Switzerland” is an attempt to show a part of the delightful culture of the country, with the view of establishing a Swiss center in a proposed museum of Europe in the future. In both instances emphasis will be placed primarily on pre-christian and non-christian phenomena. (although in the ‘Maquette’ there will be a brief look at both watchmaking and banking.