Susan Sontag’s famous essay Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) offers a profound rethinking of images of pain, horror, and atrocity. It poses an important question: how is it possible to mediate unimaginable suffering to those who have not experienced it themselves?
The Pain of Others exhibition project aims to reflect on art’s ability to speak of war, violence, and conflict, and, more importantly, on our (in)ability to relate through art to the horrors of war and the pain of those affected by it.
The project has been triggered by the unjustifiable Russian invasion of Ukraine and the unspeakable atrocities that have been happening over many months now. Yet, importantly, the exhibition’s main focus is not the war in Ukraine. Neither is it politics nor ideologies. The ambition is to address a universal human experience – our capacity to connect with other people’s pain and suffering through art.
[ . . . ]
Curated by: Leoš Válka, Otto M. Urban, Michaela Šilpochová, Tomáš Glanc & Stefano Carini
Exhibiting artists: Hans Peter Alvermann, Ali Arkady, Christian Boltanski, Dario Bosio, Wilhelm Brasse, Sergey Bratkov, Jacques Callot, Robert Capa, Stefano Carini, Maurizio Cattelan, Dagmar Demming, Otto Dix, Roger Fenton, Abel Gance, Francisco Goya, Stanley Greene, Gottfried Helnwein, Nikita Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova, Bohuš Kubinský, Sasha Kurmaz, Kateryna Lysovenko, František Novák, Marsel Onysko, Claus Otto Paeffgen, Party Of The Dead, Gerhard Richter, Andres Serrano, Tim Shaw, Chaim Sokol, Bohdan Sokur, Lena Stroganova & Alina Dykhman, Alexander Tinei, Rosemarie Trockel, Nick Ut, Matvei Vaisberg, Jitka Válová, Vasilij Vasiljevič Vereščagin, Alina Yakubenko, Yōsuke Yamahata a Kamila Ženatá
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Prague, Czech Republic
