Annette Amberg Everything but Arms

Annette Amberg (b. 1978 in Bern, lives and works in Zürich) questions in her artistic works the possibilities and meanings of the political and symbolic exchange of knowledge and goods and their effects on the construction of cultural identity. In doing so, she takes an interest, on the one hand, in historical narratives, including photographic material and sculptural elements, and, on the other hand, she focuses repeatedly on the debate with modern architecture and its formal, social and global connotations. In doing so, she creates a multivalent network of connections within the history of architecture and culture. Here the concern is the complex relationship between identity and representation, constructed image and coded idea as well as the relationship between a private version and the official version of history and a revision of modern architecture with its western connotations as reflected in the act of export into other cultural contexts.

The ambiguous exhibition title Everything But Arms is partly a reference to the similarly named trade agreement between the EU and a series of less developed states, which is based on reciprocity, transport and freedom from duties for all goods except weapons. But the ambiguity of the word ‹arms› (weapons and limbs) also permits a reference to a fragmentary way of seeing, such as the way an archaeologist views fragments from a foreign culture – whether it be an excavated sculpture, architectural fragments or other cultural heritage. Consequently, the title also refers to the working method of Annette Amberg, appropriating in a poetical manner historical and cultural material and its formal languages and examining them from a new point of view.

In her first major solo exhibition in the Kunsthaus Glarus, Annette Amberg moves forward with her interest in the cultural and ideological transfer of ideas and objects and examines them again with reference to the former French colonies in South East Asia. On the basis of her recurrent concern with the life of her uncle, the Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann, the artist combines recent and newly created works into an ultimate work complex. Vann Molyvann was born in Kampot, Cambodia, in 1926, and in 1946 he travelled with a stipend as one of the first Khmer to Paris, in order to study law and later architecture with greater intensity. There he grew familiar with western culture, especially the visions of modern architecture. On returning to the now independent Cambodia, the architect soon received important commissions from the Prince and later head of state, Norodom Sihanouk, and helped design the rise of a modern civil society by adapting the techniques of the ‹International Style› to local conditions while also drawing on Asian architectural traditions. With financial and technical support from international project sponsors and consultants such as the former associate of Le Corbusier, Vladimir Bodiansky, in a short flowering of about 15 years hundreds of buildings were erected. The development was abruptly interrupted by the political tensions in South-East Asia and the subsequent regime of terror under the Red Khmer in the seventies.

In the exhibition, the dialogue with the architecture of the Kunsthaus Glarus will again be a reference point, as it was already in the work Portrait (2010), which became part of the collection of Glarner Kunstverein after the exhibition Of Objects, Fields, And Mirrors (2010), and which can now be seen in the entrance area. By means of subtle interventions in the architecture of the Kunsthaus this work evokes a fictitious meeting of Vann Molyvann with his professional colleague and contemporary in Glarus, Hans Leuzinger. In the current exhibition the artist presents sculptural concrete elements with the title Structure IV-VIII (2011) which refer to functional and aesthetic structures often used by Vann Molyvann and other Cambodia architects in the late fifties and the sixties, and have become an important trademark of regional South East Asian architecture.
Parallel to this the artist also presents a film work, entitled Documentation (2011) and a series of stills, Untitled (Blvd. Mao Tse Toung 107, 2011), which was shot by herself as a tourist in Cambodia. In this 16mm film the camera focuses the temples in Angkor Wat, different monuments designed by Vann Molyvann, as well as his private house.

In the Oberlichtsaal the artist presents an accessible, inclined platform, covered with a red carpet to comprise the space. With this site-specific work, Annette Amberg presents a representative gesture as well as an irritating display for the viewers and their reception of further work on the walls.
The textual work Portait (Phnom Penh, 2007-11) presents several street names in the Cambodian Capital, which are named after the patrons of the emerging autonomous nation. Thus manifesting an effort of neutrality in the development of the country as well as a manifestation of the polar forces of the Cold War which accompanied Cambodia‘s history. Parallel to this work, there is again a series of archival photographies, Untitled (Life and Work, 2011), from the private context of her uncle in the 60ies, showing intimite moments as well as subtle relations of power and race. In the intertwining of documentary material, such as texts, photography and film, as well as other objects in a spacial setting, Annette Amberg creates a fragmentary and subjective narrative. The artist’s interest is directed especially towards private images as well as presentational and representational forms shown both in politics and in art. At the same time she also focuses mechanisms of exchange and the perception of foreign cultures as well as the formation and inheritance of stereotypes of the exotic.