Lecture and talk with Dr. Damian Lentini, moderated by Ingo Arend

The lecture will explore the historical development and ongoing potential of realisms with respect to its deployment as a mode of resistance against both embedded forms of (neo)colonialism, racist segregation and authoritarianism. Exploring works from the Postwar period up until the present day, it will seek to both critically interrogate the notion of realism as a sort of umbrella term that unifies the work of a disparate range of artists, as well as point towards the artistic, social and political potentialities of contemporary “realisms” in combating recent neo-fascist movements throughout the world.

Dr. Damian Lentini is a curator whose research and work unpacks the imbricated histories of modern and contemporary art from the postwar period up until our present moment. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Melbourne in 2009 and has since worked on various projects in Australia, Germany and Austria. He is currently the Deputy Director at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen and prior to that, was Curator at the Vienna Secession. Before moving to Vienna, Lentini worked at the Haus der Kunst in Munich from 2015 to 2023, where he collaborated on the highly acclaimed exhibition project Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and Atlantic, 1945-1965 (2016), alongside Okwui Enwezor, Ulrich Wilmes, and Katy Siegel. His own curatorial projects include exhibitions with Phyllida Barlow, Sung Tieu, Jeremy Shaw, Rochelle Feinstein, Dumb Type, Kapwani Kiwanga, Vernon Ah Kee and the Karrabing Film Collective.