Day After Debt is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and is curated by Mari Spirito, Founding Director of Protocinema. Support for this exhibition is provided by SAHA, Istanbul; Haro Cumbusyan; Bilge Öğüt; Marty and Rebecca Eisenberg; and the MSU Broad’s general exhibitions fund. Special thanks to Pelin Tan, Koray Duman, and Laura Hanna and Christopher Casuccio from Strike Debt.
About the Exhibition
Troubled by the rampant debt culture that has developed around higher education in the United States, Kurdish artist Ahmet Öğüt has enlisted leading contemporary artists to produce imaginative responses to this crisis and the pressures it places upon graduates. Presented jointly by the Broad MSU and the Istanbul-based art organization Protocinema, Day After Debt comprises a series of sculptures designed and produced by Öğüt, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler, Superflex, and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Located in interstitial spaces throughout the museum, these sculptures function as collection points for public contributions to The Debt Collective, a student-debt canceling initiative launched by Strike Debt’s Rolling Jubilee. In addition to alleviating debt, this collective creates a platform that aims to offer those struggling to repay student loans more possibilities for organization, advocacy, and resistance. In line with the conceptual foundations of much of Öğüt’s artistic practice, Day After Debt engages a relevant issue that affects a large swath of the population. By situating the project in a university museum setting, this exhibition offers students, educators, and the wider community a forum in which to address this societal problem directly.
Artists featured in the exhibition include Ahmet Öğüt, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler, Superflex, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.
All works in the exhibition are commissioned by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and Protocinema, and appear courtesy the artists and Lombard Freid Gallery, New York; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York; Galerie Lelong, New York; and Johann König Gallery, Berlin.
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