Damian Christinger

23 Dec 2022 - 21 Jan 2023 — Visual Arts

Photo credit: Rita Zurbrugg

Damian Christinger (*1975, Zurich) studied Global Art History and Intercultural Studies. He now works as an independent curator, writer and lectures at different institutions on transcultural theory and practice, the Anthropocene and indigenous knowledge. His main focus is on the construction of “the Other” in intercultural relations, the nature/human dichotomy in Western thought and the de-colonization of the history of ideas. He has written extensively on transcultural issues and the Anthropocene and published on such different topics as the cultural landscapes of Singapore, the reception of the Amazon in Western art or Paulo Freire and his legacy.

His museum show at the Museum Rietberg, where he was a guest curator 2014/15, featured 21 Swiss artists, who questioned the relationship between the collection of antique non-European art and its local public. He was a guest-curator for TBA21’s “The Current”, 2015/2016, which is an ongoing investigation by artists and scientists on the changing oceans on the research ship “Dardanella”. He is the co-editor of the publication „Happy Tropics 1“ (with Michael Schindhelm), a book on the fast changing cultural topographies in Singapore and its strife to become a green city. He was the Co-Curator (with Dimitrina Sevova) of „New Buenos Aires“, an exhibition focusing on the challenges of a postcolonial approach towards curating in Switzerland at Corner College, Zurich. He was also the co-curator of the “Assembleia Mothertree” ,2018, in collaboration with Ernesto Neto, Fondation Beyeler, and Daniela Zyman. 2019 saw the opening of “A Ship Will Not Come”, an exhibition at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich and a longterm research and collaboration with Roger M. Buergel and Adnan Softic. In 2020 he participated as a writer in the exhibition “Tomorrow is an Island” at the ADM Gallery of the Nanyang Technological University as part of the Singapore Biennale. Since 2021 he is the curator for Habitat: A Space for Essays on the Interconnectedness Between Art and Ecologies @ Wyss Academy for Nature, Berne, Switzerland and in 2022 at Espace Diaphanes, Löwenbräu Zurich for Videoart.

His latest essays appeared in publications like Artreview, Kunstbulletin, Diaphanes Magazine, On-Curating and the Swiss Museum Magazine. And in books like “Beyond Anthropology: Art, History and the Unbearable Longing for a Nondual Existence” in: Ernesto Neto and the Huni Kuin: Aru Kuxipa/Sacred Secret, TBA21 Wien/Sternberg Press, 2016, “Hinter den Spiegeln”, in Claire Hoffmann: Nives Widauer – Villa Nix, (exhibition catalogue Centre Culturel Suisse Paris and Kunstmuseum Olten), Binding Séléction d’Artistes, Sept. 2019, “Xenos” in: Edelmann, Rohner, Storchenegger: Manjakop – Wild, Exotic, Different, (exhibition catalogue Historisches- und Völkerkundemuseum St. Gallen), Edition Klandestin, Aug. 2019, „Eye to Eye – The Legacy of Paulo Freire“ in: Daniela Zyman: The Commissions Book, TBA21/Sternberg Press, September 2020, „E você, quem é você», in: ZHdK und Fotomuseum Winterthur: Nachbilder. Eine Foto Text Anthologie, Spector Books, June 2021.