Klára Kusá

The project explores attempts to escape from the GDR as acts of resistance, courage, and human longing for freedom, contrasting them with the current condition of the Stasi Museum and juxtaposing them with materials from the Stasi archive that document historical events, locations, and bureaucratic traces. Rather than portraying these events in a conventional documentary sense, the project reinterprets them through a poetic and visual lens, focusing on the tension between surveillance and movement, control, and the desire for escape.
LINK FOR THE PROJECT: https://klarakusa.com/ESCAPING
EXHIBITION VIEWS: https://klarakusa.com/ESCAPING-in-space
INTERVIEWS: https://klarakusa.com/ESCAPING_Interviews-with-contemporary-witnesses

This book is based on a series of interviews with artists, guided by a physical exchange of goods generated through a simple score.
The conversations begin as open dialogues about the artists’ practices, contexts, and positions within the art system, fueled by my own interest in their work. After each interview, the score is introduced: the artist is invited to send me an unspecified object. This physical exchange functions as a second step, communication develops further, and a relationship begins to form. The publication and the exhibition, produced from the objects exchanged between myself and each participating artist, operate as an attempt to grasp, and ultimately destabilize, the traditional role of the artist. Rather than positioning myself solely as a producer of artistic commodities, I inhabit a space between artist, curator, and theorist. Here, the conversation becomes the artwork itself, not a supplement to artistic production, but its primary form. Structured through a series of dialogues, the book and the exhibition reflect on how artistic identity is negotiated within institutional frameworks.
In collaboration with: Meriç Algün, Guillem S. Arquer, Om Bori, Dora García, Andrea Knezović, Igor Grubić, Noor Us Sabah Saeed, Simon Sheikh, Claudia de la Torre.