“Gabo Camnitzer: Glorious Wound”
YoU Exhibition
October 2, 2021
Year of Uncertainty Artist-In-Residence, Gabo Camnitzer, presents Glorious Wound, a multi-component installation that focuses on the past, present and future of childhood, analyzing and experimenting with the structures and ideas that shape it. This presentation takes its title from French communist educator and theorist, Célestin Freinet (1896-1966), who suffered a lung injury during World War I. This “glorious wound,” as Freinet called it, had a profound effect on his teaching methods. No longer able to project his voice to his pupils, he decided to transform his approach to emphasize the emancipatory potential of collective creativity. He removed the rows of chairs and desks, and installed a printing press as the focal point of his elementary school classroom. With this, Freinet reshaped the relationship between student and classroom, and between classroom and world. He supported his students in researching and documenting their communities, committing the lived experiences and materials conditions of neighbors to print.
Inspired by Freinet’s resourcefulness, Camnitzer presents a body of research that takes our current moment as an opportunity to reimagine systems of education. Glorious Wound revolves around the contradictions of institutional education, and the ways the COVID-19 era has laid bare crises within it. With a series of interlocking projects spanning video, sculpture, printed material, workshops, and activism, the artist seizes uncertainty to actualize practices and modes of analysis that could serve as the basis for a more just education system.
Image Description: On the left side, there is a large projected still from Gabo Camnitzer’s film, a Picture-in-Picture view of archival classroom materials and blueprints. In the background to the right of the projection, a stack of blue and white posters are on the floor. To the right of the posters, facing the projection, are nine small public school chairs in different colors and materials. Behind the chairs is a large wall text of the exhibit, and to the right is an empty doorway emanating bright green light.
Image Description: In a dark gallery, two rows of small public school chairs made of different colors and materials face a large projection. In the background is a large projected film still: a blue rug with a purple circle is underneath a pale hand. From out of frame, the hand holds a photo of students sitting on a blue rug listening to a teacher in a classroom.
Image Description: A room with bright neon purple lights above shine on a rug on the floor. The rug has a grid pattern with five rows of six dots in the middle of each grid square. From left to right, each row is a different color, in different shades of red, purple, and pink.
Image Description: The same room, now lit from above with bright neon green lights, shines on a rug on the floor. The rug has a grid pattern with five rows of six dots in the middle of each grid square. From left to right, each row is now a different color, in different shades of green.
Image Description: From the top left corner, a beige hand peels back a poster from a large stack, revealing columns of text on the back of the poster. The front of the poster is blue with a large white circle in its center.
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