An important new acquisition was presented in the South Wing: The magnum opus 'Memory Lost' by photographer and activist Nan Goldin – one of the most revered and significant artists of our time. The work was on show alongside selected works from the collection by artists Taryn Simon and Cindy Sherman.
Louisiana takes pride in presenting a very important new acquisition in the museum’s collection, ‘Memory Lost’, by American photographer Nan Goldin (b. 1953). Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential artists of her generation, Goldin won international acclaim in the 1980s with her slide show ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’, a deeply personal depiction of bohemian subculture and nightlife in cities such as New York and Berlin in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Intimate and
harrowing
'Memory Lost' (2019-21) is an approx 24 minute long digital slide show, which has already been heralded as a masterpiece in Goldin's career. The work - which is both intimate, poetic, captivating and heartbreaking - revolves around abuse, friendship, love, deprivation and loss. It is jointly owned by the Louisiana and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
The work is composed of images and footage from Goldin’s extensive archive. The artist has battled with addicition and came close to dying a few years ago as a result of her addiction to the painkiller OxyContin. Since then, she has been at the forefront of the fight against the Sackler family, the producers of this drug, which in large part has caused the current, devastating opioid epidemic in the United States. Goldin and her activist group P.A.I.N. have been portrayed in the award-winning documentary ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’, which recently was nominated to an Oscar.
More from the collection
On view in this part of the South Wing was also the installations by Japanese Yayoi Kusama as well as the Danish/Norwegian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset's 'Powerless Structures, fig. 11'. You could also find a selection of the photographic work 'An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar' by American Taryn Simon.
