黑料不打烊

At the centre of the showcase exhibition Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston 鈥� Plague and Protest are two colour woodcuts by New York based artists Zorawar Sidhu (* 1985) and Rob Swainston (* 1970) from their 18-part series Doomscrolling (2021). These works are being displayed for the first time at the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings). In the series, Sidhu and Swainston deal with significant events that occurred in the United States between 24 May 2020 and 6 January 2021: the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the death of George Perry Floyd, the formation of Black Lives Matter and the insurrection in front of and inside the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC. With their woodcuts, Sidhu and Swainston created vividly coloured depictions of early 21st-century historical events.

For the series, Swainston and Sidhu may have chosen the oldest printmaking medium, the woodcut, yet their images feel no less contemporary. Material, form and history come together in a unique way in Doomscrolling. Its woodcuts reflect on protest and insurrection, pandemic and isolation, and the dissemination of news through the media, whether digital or analogue, and its consumption, which informs but at the same time creates new dependencies and illnesses. The term doomscrolling refers to the phenomenon of excessive consumption of primarily negative and frightening news, an activity whose harmful effects can include pathogenic psychophysiological reactions and compulsive addictive behaviour.