Sebald variations

W. G. Sebald remains in limbo. His works, written in the German of his childhood, are nostalgic, evocative, a hybrid of images and texts, as well as a hybrid of travel writing, novels and essays. They are autobiographical yet interested in collective history. Profoundly poetic, they explore most of the great themes of the 20th century: migrations, individual memory, historic discourses, political violence, trauma, the figure of the author, travel, tourism, memory maps, intertextuality, the archive, the documentary and art and literature as ethical instruments of restitution. 

The exhibition Sebald Variations seeks to introduce a critical reflection, and recount the different ways Sebald’s work has influenced and engaged in a dialogue with the visual arts since his death in 2001. The exhibition examines the way several conceptual strategies for using images with texts, for historical reflection, for the unexpected juxtaposition of scenes and narrativity as a whole, not only appear in Sebald’s work, but have, on countless occasions, been directly or indirectly alluded to and even included in the works of a number of artists. The exhibition takes into account the different exhibitions, publications and artworks associated with Sebald that have been produced since 2001, or which enter into a dialogue with his books, in order to look at his ongoing impact on the artistic endeavours of today from a new perspective.