typical!

Clichés of Jews and Others

01.04.2009 - 11.10.2009
Palais Eskeles
Dorotheergasse 11
1010 Wien

“typical! Clichés of Jews and Others” is an exhibition about seeing, perceiving, ordering and classifying images and objects relating to ourselves and to others. It shows objects, pictures, photographs and audiovisual items portraying or making a statement about people. In other words, it looks at stereotypes.

Stereotypes arise in general as a result of ignorance and fear of others – the inconceivable, inexplicable and incomprehensible, in brief fear of the other and differentiation from the self. They help to order the world, to position others and the self. Used positively, they help to characterise others in the process of positioning the self. Used negatively, they help to demonise others and glorify the self. Against this background the exhibition “typical! Clichés of Jews and Others” discusses how representations of stereotyping motifs in fine arts relate to objects from trivial arts and sets them against works that use critical irony or paradox to question clichés.

Stereotypes occupy an ambivalent position as a means of classifying and ordering impressions and of exerting judgemental control. The exhibition also shows ways out, possibilities of subverting this classification. For all that the stereotype is a classification imposed or formulated from without, it is also a definition and internalised image of the self, created to provide reassurance of one’s own most striking characteristics and also as a reaction to the images of others. Both stereotypes, the externalised and the internalised one, are increasingly questioned by members of the group. This is done subversively by radically exaggerating the stereotype or by offering a counter-stereotype. In many cases this subversion cannot escape the criticism of merely preserving the stereotypes and presenting them from a different angle.

As the title indicates, the exhibition is not just about anti-Semitic prejudices. Since anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism are just one aspect of racism as a “construction of the other according to one’s own wishes and ideas”, as the Africa expert Walter Schicho put it, parallels are also drawn, and stereotypes of e.g. Native Americans, African Americans or Aborigines appear as well. These parallels, which are neither systematic nor complete, are intended to show that Jewish and anti-Jewish stereotypes are not a unique phenomenon and also to make visitors aware of the problem of stereotypes, images of others and prejudice in a more global sense. The inclusion of anti-Islamic stereotypes points up the topicality of all cliché thinking and highlights the degree to which we are influenced both by historical and by modern politically motivated prejudices. 

Free guided tours in German:  Sun: 3 pm

Curator:
Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek

Recommended links::
» Jewish Museum Berlin - Jewish Museum Berlin
» Exhibition website - Exhibition website

Further information:

» Download flyer (pdf)
» Press information
» Visiting information