Museo Helga de Alvear, Cáceres

28 June – 20 October 2024

“I know our culture is in denial about a lot of things. Our hard-wiring as human beings probably prevents us from knowing a great deal about what is real, and each language also sets limits. But every once in a while people experience breakthroughs…”

With an innovative multimedia practice extending over five decades, Susan Hiller (1940-2019) is widely considered one of the most influential artists of her generation. This significant presentation introduces audiences in Cáceres, and beyond in Spain, to the breadth of the artist’s enquiries into what lies beyond rationality and recognition, and will include early and late works in media as varied as painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation. It is the first major survey of the artist’s career since her passing in 2019.

Dedicated to the Unknown focuses on a sustained area of investigation for Hiller – our culture’s ambivalent fascination with things that lie outside the scope of normal, everyday comprehension. The selected works explore ideas frequently considered alternative or esoteric, or even marginalised or disregarded: extrasensory perception; beliefs in mystical powers; the significance of dreams; practices of automatic writing; and collective experiences of subconscious, unconscious and paranormal activity. The work’s impact does not lie in either advocating for or denying the truth of such phenomena, but rather presents the existence of such practices, beliefs, and experiences as a ‘social fact’, excavating the hidden aspects of culture to reveal there is something more elusive, uncanny, and fascinating beneath the surface of what at first seems easy to understand; life is full of unknowns. 

Throughout her career, Hiller collected and re-contextualised a diverse array of cultural artefacts –materials that always were commonly overlooked, denigrated or dismissed – to create cool, minimal and serial works that pushed the boundaries of post-conceptual practice into mysterious, unchartered territory. In the artist’s words: “I’m committed to working with what I call ghosts, that is, with cultural discards, fragments and things that are invisible to most people but intensely important to a few: situations, ideas and experiences that haunt us collectively.” 

The first major solo exhibition after the artist’s passing in 2019 will feature works loaned from the Estate of Susan Hiller, Lisson Gallery and Inelcom collection, shown alongside a major installation from the collection of Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Helga de Alvear.

Curated by Andrew Price

© Foto: Museo Helga de Alvear. Tania Castro.