Contemporary political issues will be considered through the lens of the interior in Question the Wall Itself, which will feature works by 23 artists from 15 countries. The Walker Art Center has commissioned seven of the works, and although most date from 2012 to the present, some are from the 1970s. Question the Wall Itself will present a wide variety of works conceived as rooms, including everything from an anteroom, a living room, and a prison cell, to a showroom, a library, and an interior garden. “Recasting our conception of interior space and design, the works on view will exist between artwork, prop and set, or stage, challenging understandings of social convention, habit, and code,” said the exhibition’s curator, Walker Art Center artistic director Fionn Meade.

For example, artist Walid Raad’s 2014 Letters to the Reader (1864, 1877, 1916, 1923), creates and questions “potentially hollow decors imperceptible to spectators…the speculative promise of museum-scale showrooms for modern and contemporary ‘Arab art’ in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” said Meade. Also according to Meade, Jonathas de Andrade’s 2012 Nostalgia, a Class Sentiment “animates the modern architecture of Brazil as a foyer of the politics of nostalgia.” He added: “Through each of the artist’s examinations of specific interior spaces and architecture—both public and private—the political, social and subjective contexts of these environments are revealed.”

Question the Wall Itself
Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
November 20–May 21