Highlights from Luther and the Avantgarde

On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation—with celebrations stretching over four days at the end of May in Germany—the group show “Luther and the Avantgarde” was mounted in the Old Prison of Wittenberg, a town that is a 40-minute train ride from Berlin, and home to Protestant Reformation initiator Martin Luther. The artworks were displayed in renovated jail cells, hallways and staircases of the former prison, which has been modified to house the art exhibition. With the Protestant church as a major sponsor, the project takes a remarkably critical stance on the Reformation, and moves beyond the ecclesiastic into the sociocultural sphere: How can art reform today’s world?

With 69 artists from 21 countries, a large number of works that were on display are from the Asia-Pacific region: China, Indonesia and Turkey were all represented within the spectrum of artistic practices. This was because Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur eV, the foundation that organized the show, established a strong foothold as a facilitator of exhibitions showcasing Chinese art in Germany, garnering major media attention with the exhibition project “China 8” in 2015.

The eclectic accumulation of artistic positions “imprisoned” within Wittenberg’s Old Prison parallels political alterations and even the changes in our freedom of expression. It also invokes the drastic changes in print and digital media, the use of language and typography. Although the show was not sterile like a white-cube exhibition, it could be seen as a spatial intervention in an unusual building, one that took a hard look at how art transforms our world today.

Here are the highlights from “Luther and the Avantgarde.”

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