MICHAEL COOK : BROKEN DREAMS
14.06.2020 → 20.09.2020Michael Cook was born to an Aboriginal father and grew up adopted into a Western family. The artist’s work focuses on subjects such as postcolonial identity, dispossession and displacement, often inverting perspectives between colonizer and colonized, and blending history with the imaginary.
The Broken Dreams series, comprising ten large-format photographs, was produced in 2010, the first year of his artistic career. In these successive tableaux, a young Aboriginal woman imagines herself in the strange clothes of European settlers and their material possessions. Her reflections are curious rather than fearful: do they feel the same as she does? As her journey progresses, she realizes that their culture is not her own. In time, she sees the impact the new settlers are having on her people. Her dreams shattered, in despair, she sheds her new clothes and returns to her roots to find freedom – the connection to her land.


Past exhibitions
ARTIST ACTIVIST ARCHIVIST : BERNHARD LÜTHI INVITES
Main exhibition 16.06.2024 → 10.11.2024
HIGH FIVE!
Main exhibition 17.12.2023 → 14.04.2024
ABSUM
Special Focus 17.12.2023 → 14.04.2024
INTERSTELLAR
Main exhibition 18.06.2023 → 12.11.2023
OBJECT OF INTEREST 700 E
Special Focus 18.06.2023 → 12.11.2023
DREAMING IN THE DREAM OF OTHERS
Main exhibition 10.12.2022 → 16.04.2023
NAMSA LEUBA
Special Focus 12.06.2022 → 06.11.2022
PAPUNYA 1971
Special Focus 12.06.2022 → 06.11.2022
FUGITIVE PRESENT
Main exhibition 12.06.2022 → 06.11.2022
BREATH OF LIFE
Main exhibition 13.06.2021 → 17.04.2022
LAST WHISPERS : PRELUDE
Special focus 03.11.2021 → 17.04.2022
VLADIMIR ŠKODA
Special focus 13.06.2021 → 08.10.2021
RESONANCES
Aboriginal Art 14.06.2020 → 25.04.2021
SUPERSTUDIO
Special focus 30.09.2020 → 04.04.2021
MICHAEL COOK : BROKEN DREAMS
Special focus 14.06.2020 → 20.09.2020
BEFORE TIME BEGAN
Contemporary Aboriginal Art 09.06.2019 → 29.03.2020
WALALA TJAPALTJARRI SELF-PORTRAIT
Special focus 11.12.2019 → 29.03.2020
MYSTERY AND MODERNITY
Special focus 21.09.2019 → 01.12.2019
PAINTING ON COUNTRY
Special focus 09.06.2019 → 15.09.2019
YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND
Legacy, a life as a photographer 16.12.2018 → 31.03.2019
ROBERT FIELDING
Special focus 16.12.2018 → 31.03.2019