What is sculpture? The works of the internationally renowned artist Danica Dakić can also be read as a contribution to the exploration of this most elementary artistic question. The complex installation “Missing Sculpture” was created for the Lehmbruck Museum in 2017 as part of the exhibition series “Sculpture 21st”. On the traces of both Lehmbruck and Beuys the artist joined participants and guest artists in the glass hall of the museum in exploring the potential form of a (social) sculpture of the future.
The book opens with a conversation with the artist about “Missing Sculpture”. Three further sections of the publication present works in which Dakić singles out other historical places and transforms these into settings in which she and her actors investigate social formations and, at the same time, collective utopias and individual dreams. A series of essays by outstanding international authors reflect upon the complexity of this deeply poetic work and, in particular, expand upon the performative and site-specific dimensions of the video and photographic works as well as the installations, which were created in the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, a nuclear bunker and mine in the former Yugoslavia, a school in São Paulo, St. George’s Hall in Liverpool and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille.