“Body Luggage”
Kunsthaus Graz
Anyone annoyed by Ai Weiwei’s photographic impression of a drowned Syrian child refugee could find tremendous hope in “Body Luggage: Migration of Gestures,” mounted as part of the Steirischer Herbst, an annual festival of dance, theater, art, and music in Graz. Here, art-historical tropes of continuity and mutation propagated by Alois Riegl and Aby Warburg politicized an international gathering of migration-themed, performance-centric commissions, which deftly invited one to rethink classical notions of innovation and originality. Indeed, many of the works explored ways in which artists and art