Art Basel Miami Beach 2019

acb Gallery is delighted to present the works by Katalin Ladik at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, in the Survey section. The ongoing rediscovery of the oeuvre of Katalin Ladik (1942), a poet, performer and actress active in the former Yugoslavia as well as Hungary, is reflected in a number of current exhibitions and recognitions. The artist was awarded The LennonOno Grant for Peace in 2016 along with such renowned figures as Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson. Furthermore, she was an exhibitor of documenta 14 in 2017. The road to this acclaim has been an exceptionally active artistic career revolving around the notion of intermedia through an extended conception of the medium of poetry. Often referred to as the „Yoko Ono of the Balkans”, Ladik has been a forerunner not only of intermedia art but also of performance, involving her body as well as sound and visual experiments, and introducing proto-feminist discourse in the politically and socially oppressive context of Eastern Europe. The main focus of acb’s presentation is the intermedial approach appearing in Katalin Ladik’s visual, vocal and performative practice. The exhibition presents Ladik’s major performances and actions between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s in the form of photo series of live performances and of so-called photo-performances (that were performed only for the camera). A selection of the artist’s visual poems presented together with their phonic interpretations illustrates how Ladik integrates poetry with sound and visuality.