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Auto/Pathographies: Re-constructing Identity through Representations of Illness Jolene Pozniak
Summer exhibition at the Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck Austria. Curated by Tamar Tembeck and presented in conjunction with the International Fellowship Programme for Visual Arts and Theory at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen.
NMP
The stark white walls of the Kunstpavillon Innsbruck took on a distinctly clinical feel with this summer’s exhibition Auto/pathographies. A multi-media exhibition, Auto/pathographies brought together work by 10 international artists, who explore the complex and multi-faceted nature of illness. Through photography, video and performance, the 50 artists investigate processes of transformation that occur for those affected, directly or indirectly, by disease. As part of a curatorial residency with the Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, curator Tamar Tembeck drew from interdisciplinary approaches that address body politics, the politics of sickness and the politics of (self)representation as a means of examining illness and identity as both an affirmation of one’s existence and the acceptance of one’s inevitable mortality. Inherently autobiographical in nature, autopathographical representations expose illness and suffering — ultimately private and personal experiences — as an assertion of one’s agency in the face of often debilitating circumstances. As such, many of the works function to disrupt viewer expec-