Artistic exploration of post-colonial topics, just like theoretical consideration of these issues, arrived late in the German-speaking world. Anyone who is at all familiar with Lisl Ponger’s current status in this field might be surprised that her exhibition in the Landesgalerie Linz is only the artist’s second larger solo presentation. The first of these exhibitions in 2001 was not in a recognized art institution but instead in Vienna’s Arbeiterkammer (Workers’ Professional Association premises), a fact that is however indicative not just of the Central European time-lag mentioned above but also points to an atypical artistic career.

It was in around 2000, in no small part due to Lisl Ponger’s involvement in political and artistic activities reacting to the rightwing coalition in government in Austria, which had just been elected, that Vienna’s art scene began to pay increasing attention to an artist who had long gained recognition in another sphere as a filmmaker and in yet another realm as a »photographer«. Back then the works constructed their arguments pictorially and, unlike some artistic platitudes motivated by opposition or anti-racist sentiment, were striking in the vehemence of their »resistance«. This was thanks to an aesthetic level with the clear hallmark of a refusal to limit itself solely to aesthetic concerns, but on the contrary introducing an element into contemporary political discourse of the day that one might dub the (cultural) historical dimension of a social problem like racism. Staged photographs such as »Congo Blues«, »Measures in the Afternoon«, »Meet me in St. Louis, Louis« or »Out of Austria«, shown in the Vienna Arbeiterkammer exhibition, address the history of colonialism and its diverse ramifications for the world views, popular cultures and structures of looking, even in a landlocked Central European country that has nothing to do with this history, at least as far as public perception is concerned. The manner in which the photos addressed this inter alia helped to ensure that certain xenophile attitudes in the language and symbolism of the struggle against the right-wing really stuck in the gullet of purportedly politically correct consciousness, at least for viewers with some degree of sensitivity. Looking at these images again today, they almost seem to be classic examples of art in the German-speaking world informed by a post-colonial consciousness. However, even in 2002, when Okwui Enwezor decided to invite Lisl Ponger to his documenta, this kind of post-colonialism, produced by a white Austrian woman, seemed to be a little, well, dubious, and as a result it was instead Ponger’s photographic reflections on Genoa 2001 that were shown in Kassel – a series on the urban traces of revolution and obsession with security, which is not bad but of scant relevance to Ponger’s subsequent development.

A remarkable stance of going against the grain becomes apparent in the exhibition in Linz. The exhibition shows that Ponger for her part has carved out a niche for herself in art history through her increasing exploration of the art world, in a sense complementing her hesitant reception by the art sphere. Whilst the references in her work around and just after 2000 were still located primarily in the realms of literature, (cultural) history and anthropology/ethnography, Ponger has now in a sense passed her exam in art history. In many of her works over the past few years she has utilized the understanding of various forms of artistic Orientalism, primitivism and exoticism from the 19th and 20th centuries that she has gleaned in the process, drawing on these references not only to add extra layers of meaning to these works but also to turn them into noteworthy commentaries on the methodological and ideological complicities between histories of art, knowledge and politics in the imperial and post-imperial era. This turning-point perhaps initially became apparent in »Wild Places«, shown for the first time at the »Du bist die Welt« exhibition during the Wiener Festwochen in 2001. In this work a young woman tattoos a forearm with the word »artist«, whilst we see the words »missionary«, »mercenary«, »ethnologist« and »tourist« crossed out on the same lower arm. »Wild Places« named something merely hinted at in some earlier works, such as »The Big Game«, in which the artist poses as a big game hunter, namely a modern genealogy of the genre of imperialist action/representation with reference to the colonised Other, a process in which the artist assumes a significant role. More recent works, like »En Couleur« (2007), which transposes Man Ray’s famous 1926 photo »Noire et blanche« from its Surrealist negrophilia into the constants of the global imaginary of »National Geographic«, or series like »If I was Emil Nolde today«, which, with the culturally Other as its lodestone, traces incunabula of modernity back to their foundations in institutional practices of collecting and appropriation, culminating in the grandiose hybrid major work »Die Beute« (2006). If we had a chance to really go into detail, a description of this latter piece could take up a third of this journal, whilst here we shall simply have to be content with a few words and note an exuberant and simultaneously condensed rhetoric of references to the entirely normal (post-)modern psychopathology of cultivated Eurocentrism.

The Linz exhibition mixes this kind of »masterpiece« with works that need to be viewed more contextually, like the series »Si j’avais eu l’autorisation …« (2004), created around the Dakar Biennale. It reflects on the way in which bureaucracy torpedoed the intervention initially agreed upon for the museum of West African cultures there, whilst at the same time (probably only as a consequence of this obstacle) managing to name all the cultural baggage of presumptions brought to this kind of project even by thoughtful artists. However, the exhibition, which will be continued in autumn in the Kunsthaus Dresden, also demonstrates Ponger’s deeper analysis of the art (policy) of the early modern age, over and above reflections on modernism. »Destroy Capitalism« (2005) or »Lasst tausend Blumen blühen« (»May a thousand flowers blossom«) (2007) re-articulate classical (Dutch) still lives and their allegorical approach as early capitalist prophesies of contemporary geopolitical power rhetoric. Compared with these subtle updatings of art history, some (albeit it few) works stand out, such as the film »Imago Mundi« commissioned by the 2006 Mozart Year. Examples such as this demonstrate that it is not possible to cram all references into a work of art, running the gamut from art to literature and music or even honest cooperation with politically committed circles. Even if there are wonderful moments there, what prevails is the fussy rhetoric of people seeking to explain to others something that they have obviously only just identified as a truth themselves. Certainly these kinds of works are also legitimate attempts to extend one’s own universe and move towards more recent affinities with activist practice, yet ultimately the pieces seemed strained when compared with more specific, uncompromising works. It is against this backdrop that Lisl Ponger, right at the start of the exhibition in Linz, reveals her own highly specific qualities as an obsessive collector and passionate interpreter of quotidian objects, historical material and more or less canonical texts, filling up the Landesmuseum’s display cases – which apparently had actually always been there – with found images, collections of objects and books she has read, constituting a three-dimensional notebook of her photographic and film work. This is an infinite treasury for studying the origins of Lisl Ponger’s oeuvre for anyone who knows her works, or believes they do. For everybody else, these showcases, filled with sometimes familiar details, offer a no less enticing point of entry from which to explore how these elements are transposed into artistic form.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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