«An Unhappy Archive» brings together artistic and activist works such as photographs, videos, books, drawings and paintings that challenge the social norms of «happiness». The term goes back to the theorist Sara Ahmed, who describes «unfortunate archives» as a collective, feminist-queer and anti-racist project. This not only promotes social criticism and resistance, but also the pleasures and utopias that are made possible by alleged antifigures like «the feminist killjoy».
Andrea Thal initiated «An Unhappy Archive» as an exhibition at Les Complices * in Zurich in 2013, reinstalled it at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe in 2014, and will now be presented in an expanded form in this imagined exhibition space of the edition.
For the presentation of the «An Unhappy Archive» edition, an «Unhappy Evening» organized by OOR SALOON took place on October 15, 2016 at Galerie Mark Müller in Zurich with international artists Maya Dunietz (ISR), Evan Ifekoya (UK), AKW (ZH), Li Tavor & Moni Schori (ZH). The audio recording of the «unhappy session» which took place at the event as well as a PDF with photographs, document the occasion and are available for download here.