Eclectic Affinities

The exhibition Eclectic Affinities (28.09.2024–12 .01.2025) brings the extensive work of the artist Hamid Zénati, who was born in Constantine (Algeria) in 1944 and died in Munich in 2022, into dialogue with various objects from the collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst. With his all-over stencil technique, Zénati developed a distinct formal language and created compositions that were both playful and powerful. His paintings on textiles, ceramics, and furniture, as well as his approach to photography, challenge established boundaries and genres by moving between the realms of design, art, and interior design.

Zenati’s work resonates with the museum’s central questions: What is applied art today? Where is the boundary with the visual arts? Do our learned hierarchies, categories of knowledge, and viewing habits do justice to a diverse world?

Zenati was inspired by a wide variety of subjects, cultures, art movements, techniques, and media. The exhibition enables a new perspective on the practice of an individualist and autodidact whose observations of social, cultural, and artistic movements organically flowed into his work. It also elicits unusual approaches to the collection objects.

This topic album comprises the collection objects selected by the curators Mahret Ifeoma Kupka and Anna Schneider with reference to Zénati's work. It will be continuously filled with the objects on display throughout the duration of the exhibition and provides access to further information and background information on the objects and the respective artists and designers.