Who is old – where and when? Can we meet the ‘challenge of ageing’ optimistically? And what potential lies slumbering in the process of ageing?

Projections for global demographic trends are forecasting an increase in the world’s older population. The process of growing older is not just important for each individual but has implications for the social and cultural spheres. Yet each generation ages differently. And when can we actually talk of someone as ‘old’ at all? Even if the visible biological ageing processes are the same the world over, each culture has its differences in defining ‘age’. There is no universally valid definition of when ‘old age’ starts. So who is old – where and when?

Grey Is The New Pink presents diverse ideas and models of ‘age(ing)’ from the perspective of cultural studies and the visual arts, as well as personal and individual experience. Like fragments in a lifetime’s memories, the exhibition combines into an anthology of ageing the individual ways of dealing with such topics as lifestyle, love and sexuality, transmission of knowledge, longevity, illness, health, and death.

In the exhibition ‘age(ing)’ is explored internationally in photographs, videos, literature, drawings, as well as large-scale and multimedia installations and performances both in the work of scientists, artists and poets, as well as younger and older people from the general population. 

Until 1 September 2019, Weltkulturen Museum, Schaumainkai 29, 60594 Frankfurt, Germany