The Children, 2009

Video

The video The Children (2009) is based on the painting Fëmijët (1966) by Albanian painter Spiro Kristo. His street scene with children, painted in the propaganda style of Socialist Realism, was recreated and then filmed in Tirana, in a room at the Hotel Dajti, which was designed by Italian architect Gherardo Bosio during the Fascist occupation. In the voice-over, one of the girls says in Albanian: “The image should step out from the frame.” Francisco Pacheco, official censor of Seville’s Inquisition and author of Arte de la pintura, gave this advice to his young pupil and son-in-law Diego Velázquez. Foucault quoted it in his famous “Las Meninas” essay, which was to become the first chapter of Les mots et les choses (1966).

Video, color, sound
2:12 min., aspect ratio 4:3, loop
Edition of 4 + 2 AP

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Peter Friedl

**The Dramatist (Black Hamlet, Crazy Henry, Giulia, Toussaint), 2013**

Biography

Peter Friedl is a classic of contemporary art. The three-time documenta participant, born in 1960, can be considered a notorious participant in discourse - because his work has always understood how to address major themes in such a way that they found and find new forms away from the canon and mainstream. Forms that run counter to power and domination, subvert them, escape them.... and confront them in the process. Friedl takes away from history - for example colonialism or modernity, its paradigms and institutions - the power to define what is connected and how, and with an almost innocent-seeming aesthetic he tells a different story about humans and historical actions than we are used to and may find opportune. Peter Friedl provokes that which dominates us, including our own thinking.

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Exhibitions at KOW