double life. Identity and Transformation in Contemporary Arts

Who doesn’t sometimes want to be someone else, to take off their own self like a jacket and simply put on a new one? In the publication accompanying the exhibition double life, artists from different generations and regions presented works that address the desire to take on a different role. The different strategies of imagining a different subject could be described as eccentric, ironic, or utopian and critical. These range from the expansion of one’s own horizon of experience to the construction of fictional characters. Beyond the freely chosen identities, there is always a tangible sense of being determined by one’s own history. In this way, the works tell stories of desires and yet cannot make the artists’ selves forgotten.

The exhibition took place at the Generali Foundation in Vienna from 12 May to 12 August 2001.