Teresa BurgaKnowledge Is a Garden.
Uriel Orlow in dialogue with the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst collection28.09.2024 - 19.01.2025
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich

In the exhibition Uriel Orlow explores what a garden of knowledge can be and what its cultivation and growth signify. In line with his interests the artist sets up a dialogue between his own works and those of the museum collection, which for their part raise questions around the production or suppression of knowledge. This selection is expanded by loans from Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Sammy Baloji, Zahra Malkani and Munem Wasif – artists who engage with suppressed history and traditional knowledge in their artistic practice.

‘Knowledge Is a Garden’ is an artistic engagement with the repression of knowledge, the unjust appropriation of knowledge, and ultimately with multiple forms of knowledge production. Knowledge does not consist of neutral facts and information, and is never all-encompassing. Rather, it is always situated, historical, and, above all, contested and vulnerable. The question of who gets to speak and whose voice is silenced is as urgent as ever – and marked by global inequality.

Three loose thematic threads run through the exhibition: the entanglement of knowledge and language, and the loss of both; the extraction of knowledge and exploitation of raw materials in the Global South by countries of the Global North; and the wilful suppression of knowledge as well as consciously looking away.

By extension, the exhibition encourages visitors to consider their own knowledge as a garden that must be cultivated.

Curated by Uriel Orlow with Nadia Schneider Willen
Curatorial Assistant: Louisa Behr