Katalin Ladik – Ooooooooo-pus

The Ludwig Forum Aachen is pleased to present Ooooooooo-pus, the first major survey exhibition of Katalin Ladik (b. 1942 in Novi Sad) in Europe. Drawing on the artist’s lifelong interest in language, sound, and corporeality, the exhibition provides a first comprehensive overview of her works from the late 1960s to the present. With her radical approach to (sound) poetry and performance, Ladik established herself over the course of the 1960s and 1970s as one of the few female protagonists of the artistic avant-garde in former Yugoslavia. The multilingual and multiethnic context of her birthplace, Novi Sad (now Serbia), shapes her approach to language and poetry to this day. Her interest in the dissolution of language into individual phonemes and the sound resulting from that constitute the connecting element binding together the artist’s multifaceted collages, textile works, photographs, performances, and objects by means of the extraordinary range of her voice.

Curated by Fanny Hauser and Hendrik Folkerts
Exhibition Design: Studio Manuel Raeder with Rodolfo Samperio
Graphic Design: Bardhi Haliti
Image credits: Katalin Ladik, Ooooooooo-pus, exhibition view, Ludwig Forum Aachen, 2023. Photo: Mareike Tocha

For Katalin Ladik’s exhibition Studio Manuel Raeder developed vitrines and tables made out of card board tubes.