Found in Translation

In our globalized world, with political, economic, and cultural issues intertwined across nations, boundaries between the local and global have all but disintegrated. The necessity, and the difficulty, of communicating across cultural and historical divides is now an unavoidable aspect of our reality. Within this context, we must consider what can be lost—and gained—in translation, and what effects these endless transformations have on our lives. Found in Translation, the third exhibition in the Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim, brings together recent artworks that look to translation, in both its linguistic and more figurative senses, as a means of understanding the world around us. The works in Found in Translation explore the intersections between past political and cultural figures and contemporary history and fantasy, transposed from one culture to another through written or spoken text. Drawn equally from private loans and from the Guggenheim’s extensive collection of video, film, and new media, the exhibition focuses on artists who have come of age professionally within the past fifteen years, as political and artistic practice has increasingly engaged the contemporary era of globalization. Among the artists to be included are Patty Chang, Omer Fast, Sharon Hayes, Steve McQueen, Lisa Oppenheim, and Sharif Waked.