AES + F - Islamic Project: Budapest an Vienna

With the upcoming exhibition Knoll Galerie Wien celebrates the 30th anniversary of Knoll Galerie Budapest. On this occasion we show photos from the series Islamic Project of the Russian artist collective AES+F.

The Knoll Gallery in Budapest was founded in September 1989 in socialist Hungary, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The gallery was thus the first private commercial gallery in the still existing Eastern bloc. Since its founding in September 1989, Knoll Budapest has shown international exhibitions with a focus on Eastern Europe.

Last September, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Knoll Gallery Budapest hosted an exhibition focusing on a very specific motif from AES+F's Islamic Project series: a photograph of the Budapest Parliament, modified by Islamic architectural elements and decorated with camels in the foreground. In Vienna we show this motif together with the view of the Vienna Opera, which has also been changed by Islamic architecture.

The two galleries take the anniversary of the Budapest gallery as an opportunity to draw attention to one of the most drastic events after the fall of the Iron Curtain: the great waves of refugees in Europe since 2015.
What is interesting is the view of this famous series Islamic Project, which the collective AES+F started in 1996 with the Statue of Liberty and other well-known motifs in New York and other cities in the USA and expanded in the following years 2003 with motifs from many cities all over the world.

In 1996 the first motif of the project, the Statue of Liberty with a white burka, caused a sensation. In the same year, 1996, Samuel Huntington's "The clash of Civilizations" was published, a globally discussed thesis on the change of the world order that had existed since the Second World War. Islamic Project by the Russian artists of the group AES+F was very quickly associated with this book.
To show this project now in 2019 in Budapest and Vienna happens in a situation of great changes worldwide and also under changed parameters in the societies of the two countries Hungary and Austria. Both countries have reacted very differently to the refugee crisis, at any rate it remains a major and controversial issue throughout Europe.

The two galleries take this famous project, which has touched on neuralgic themes worldwide since its inception, as a theme for celebration: after all, the two galleries have continued to show and spark interest in contemporary art over the past 30 years (about 35 years in Vienna) in the midst of very major political and social changes - HURRA!!!!