Walid Raad's project at the Kunsthaus Zürich sheds light on key questions about museums in the 21st century. It questions what specific forms of storytelling museums make possible today and what art institutions stand for when the distinction between private and public collections is blurring. Raad deals with the untold stories and gaps as well as the silences inscribed within the exhibited objects and how these can be revealed and conveyed. The exhibition mirrors current changes in societal values and pinpoints the major challenges facing cultural institutions in the 21st century. These are especially relevant to the Kunsthaus Zürich, as the issue of how to deal with the Emil Bührle collection has shown. Raad proceeds from the proliferation of public and private, Western and non-Western art collections and museums. His emphasis is as much on the worldly forces that condition their forms, as it is on the “otherworldly,” intangible, and counter-intuitive cracks they manifest.

The starting point for his current project is the collection of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, which has been on display in Madrid since 1993. The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection is also closely linked to Switzerland. More broadly, the Kunsthaus Zürich has close ties to private collectors dating back to the early years of the 20th century, ranging from the donations of the Hans Schuler and Ottilie W. Roederstein collections in 1920 to the long-term loan of the Looser collection since 2021. With his exhibition in the Kunsthaus Zürich, Walid Raad imagines yet another sale, transfer, and display of a private collection in a public museum. The artist explores an imaginary world in which parts of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection end up in the Kunsthaus Zurich.

In his exhibition and accompanying walkthrough, Walid Raad imagines and narrates several aesthetic encounters with strange artifacts, among them a Persian carpet, images of clouds, gold and silver medieval cups, and depictions of American swamps and marches. Juxtaposing his own works with objects from the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Kunsthaus Zurich collections, the artist tries to disentangle the artifacts’ strangeness, focusing on some of the histories buried in and around the artifacts. The result is a dense web of narratives that links in an intuitive and intriguing way the history of the collections with the political, economic, and social history of the modern world: from slavery and racism in North America to the Cold War and the trouble spots of our present day; from weather forecasting technologies to the realm of the undeath.

Central to the exhibition is a combined performance and tour by Walid Raad lasting around 80 minutes. Referred to as walkthroughs, these unique explorations of the Kunsthaus invite visitors to take a strange yet informative journey through the museum and to encourage them to consider some of the odd, beautiful, thought-provoking, frightful, and joyful aspects of art.

Walid Raad (born 1967 in Chbaniyeh, Lebanon, lives in Medusa, NY) works with installations, performances, videos and photographs in which he examines how historical events of psychological and physical violence affect bodies, minds, art and tradition. He has featured in numerous international exhibitions, including documenta 11 and 13, the 14th Istanbul Biennale, and the 50th Venice Biennale, and has had solo exhibitions at MoMA in New York, the TBA21 in Vienna and the Louvre in Paris.

A project by the Kunsthaus Zürich and Zürcher Theater Spektakel. The project was commissioned by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Supported by the Tarbaca Indigo Foundation, the Monsol Foundation and the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation.

SCHEDULE OF ZÜRCHER THEATER SPEKTAKEL