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Berlin, Germany
June 30 - Oct 01, 2023
Venue: Haus Kunst Mitte (HKM)
Names can make our ancestry and knowledge of our mother tongue visible. They are something very personal, but can also be something very political, as the abuse of power can be exercised through naming. The art exhibition "To Be - Named" at Haus Kunst Mitte, created in cooperation with Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, is dedicated to the topic of naming and the significance of names for the development or suppression of a person's identity. It is the first station of an international project that includes exhibitions on the same theme in Athens (Greece), Mexico City (Mexico) and Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan).
The nucleus of the exhibition is formed by six artistic positions from the USA, which will be shown at all four locations and supplemented by just as many local positions. With this approach of bringing together local and international artists, the show aims to promote a dialogue among the participating artists with different experiences and world views as well as with the audience. Furthermore, the specific discourses on the exhibition theme in the respective countries will be addressed.
The works of zhaoyuefan was born in Wuhan, China and grew up in Beijing, China. Inupiaq, Sitŋasuaq – Nome, Alaska, United States Luz María Sánchez (MX) is a transdisciplinary artist exploring the political sphere of violence and power relations through multimedia constructs. Her artistic research extends to language as a technoscientific machine and builds upon environmental urgency. Sánchez has exhibited at Vincent Price Art Museum VPAM, Los Angeles; Galeria Metropolitana GAM, Mexico City; Piksel Festival, Bergen; Ars Electronica, Linz; MUAC, Mexico City; WRO Art Biennale, Wroclaw; and ZKM, Karlsruhe. She has authored five books, curated exhibitions and conferences on new media, and presented by invitation at leading institutions such as the School of the Art Institute Chicago, the University of the Arts London UAL, and ZKM Karlsruhe. Sánchez was awarded two consecutive Honorary Mentions from Prix Ars Electronica (2020 and 2021), grants from Visual Arts Norway [Kulturrådet], and the Mexican National System of Art Creators (SNCA). Sánchez is a member of the Samuel Beckett Society, serving in the Executive Committee 2019-2023. Her artworks are part of the Linda Pace Foundation Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art MAC Bogotá, among others. Sánchez was Artist in Residence at the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute Chicago, ArtPace San Antonio and Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid). Tsitsistas/Suhtai Nation, Montana, United States BENTLY SPANG is an independent multidisciplinary artist, educator, writer, curator and an enrolled member of the Tsitsistas/Suhtai Nation (a.k.a. Northern Cheyenne) in Montana, who works in mixed media sculpture, video, performance, photography and installation. His work confronts and confounds the persistent, romantic and inaccurate role crafted for Native people in the false narrative of ‘The West.’ He is in museum collections in the US and Europe and has exhibited at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian and the Nelson-Atkins Museum. He has an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BS in Art and Business from Eastern Montana College (a.k.a. MSU-Billings). He is a 2018 recipient of the Native Arts and Culture Foundation National Artist Fellowship. Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. Keith was a Gregory Djanikian Scholar, and his poetry has won the Rumi Prize and been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry. Elizabeth Withstandley is a research-based video installation artist that focuses on individuals and communities. She works by experimentation, research and data collection to create conceptually driven projects. Her work is rooted in conceptual art, taking the form of multi-channel video installations that explore contemporary culture through a loose narrative structure. The works question individuality, personal identity, morality, and purpose of life, while presenting a portrait of a person, a group of people, a specific culture or location.zhaoyuefan
She has been working and living in Germany and Switzerland since 2016.
zhaoyuefan's artistic practice revolves around her experience of living as a legal alien in western countries ("why am I here"). Through video/sound installation, performance, writing, and prints/publishing, she interferes with daily life situations, de-/reconstructs existing objects and found images, digging into their contexts, uses lightness to touch on the visible and invisible boundaries shaped by language, culture, identities and collective memories. Her works are a series of translations, transformations and transpositions based on the transcultural context, leading to reflections on the western cultural hegemony and its profound influence in today's global especially East Asian societies.Jenny Irene Miller
JENNY IRENE MILLER b. 1988; currently based in Dena'ina Ełnena – Anchorage, Alaska.
Jenny Irene Miller (she/her, they/them), Inupiaq, is an artist who works primarily with photography. She is originally from Nome, Alaska. Jenny holds an MFA in Art Studio, Photography, from the University of New Mexico, a BFA in Photomedia, and a BA in American Indian Studies, both from the University of Washington. She is a past Beaumont Newhall/Van Deren Coke Photography Fellow, SITE Santa Fe Scholar, Elizabeth Furber Fellow, and Fulbright Canada Killam Fellow.
Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Anchorage Museum, Portland Art Museum, SITE Santa Fe, Penumbra Foundation, Southampton Arts Center, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, and more. She has also exhibited internationally at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada and at the Incheon Open Port in South Korea, to name a few. Jenny is a recipient of awards from the Alaska Humanities Forum, National Geographic, Fulbright Canada, and a Fulbright Canada Killam Fellowship to Canada. Her work has been featured by Inuit Art Quarterly, the New York Times, National Geographic, Canadian Art, Fifth Wheel Press, Forum Magazine, and Lenscratch among others.Luz María Sánchez
Bently Spang
Keith S. Wilson
;; re(context) ;; is a series of interactive texts (a digital chapbook) first created through a digital fellowship with Laboratory Spokane. Each piece investigates the fluidity of language—how, like water, language fills its container. And how we, as the keepers of language, cannot help but contextualize it through our physical experiences, even despite the ostensibly disembodied act of being online.Elizabeth Withstandley
She is from Cape Cod, Massachusetts and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She is one of the co-founders of Locust Projects, a not-for-profit art exhibition space, in Miami, FL and Prospect Art a not-for-profit in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Select past exhibitions include Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, LA , ATHICA: Athens Institute of Contemporary Art, Athens, GA, The Bass Museum, Miami, FL, MOCA North Miami, Snitzer Gallery, Miami, VisArts in Rockville, Maryland, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, The Tel Aviv Artists’ Studios, Israel, Cultural Center, Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Tuli Mekondjo ( b. 1982, Kwanza- Sul, Angola) is a self-taught Namibian artist who is the recipient of the prestigious DAAD Artist-in Berlin Program in 2022. Mekondjo was shortlisted for the Norval Sovereign Africa art prize 2022/2023. Tuli Mekondjo works with mixed media including embroidery, photo transfer, resin and mahangu ( millet) grain- a Namibian food staple. Drawing on colonial and war-time photographic archives, Mekondjo’s practice explores Namibian history and identity politics. Drawing on histories of change, loss and submission- particularly when it comes to women- she stitches between past and present. She pays homage to her forebears, fertility and continuity, whist commenting on gendered struggle, intergenerational trauma, and displacement. In many resent work, the artist positions herself in dialogue with her ancestors, directly acknowledging their pain, whilst referencing multiple African folklore traditions. Spirituality is an increasingly important element in her work, and Mekondjo extends her textured media into performance. Mekondjo has exhibited in multiple exhibitions and fairs, including museum shows, in Namibia, South Africa, Germany, Cote d’Ivoire, France , USA, Hong Kong, UK, Belgium and Portugal. Her works are held in multiple international collections. Nnenna Onuoha is a Ghanaian-Nigerian researcher, filmmaker and artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her films and videos centre Afrodiasporic voices to explore monumental silences surrounding the histories and afterlives of colonialism across West Africa, Europe and the US, asking: how do we remember, which pasts do we choose to perform and why? A second strand of her work focuses on archiving Black experience in the present to chronicle how, amidst all this, we practice care and repair for ourselves and each other. Her work has shown at the Galerie im Turm, the Kunsverein Hamburg, the Brückemuseum, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Galerie im Körnerpark and alpha nova and galerie futura. Nnenna is currently a doctoral researcher in Media Anthropology at Harvard University and Global History at the University of Potsdam. She is also a 2023-4 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow. Angélica Chio has lived and worked alternately in Berlin and Mexico City. She currently resides in Mexico City, where she was born in 1966. She studied Visual Arts at the National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking "La Esmeralda" in Mexico City, and pursued postgraduate studies in Art in Context at the University of the Arts Berlin. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, video festivals, and national and international cooperative projects. She has been a recipient of grants from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts, Mexico, and in 2023 she received a grant for artists over 45 years old from the Kunststiftung K52 (Art Foundation K52) in Germany. Investigating language and its possibilities of translation and transference, as well as proposing new alliances between word and image, constitute the compass and guiding thread of her artistic research. Rather than exploring a medium of expression, she focuses on concepts around an event and approaches it from different perspectives and strategies, creating independent and interconnected works, primarily drawings, objects, artist books, videos, and installations. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and grew up across Kabul, Delhi, and Berlin. Using a narrative concept as a starting point, Jeanno Gaussi creates intimate installations about space and memory. Her work crosses a variety of media, including video, photography, objects, and texts. A central theme of her practice is the exploration of the places where she has worked, traveled, and experienced meaningful encounters. Through these encounters, her work engages questions of remembrance, the search for identity, and the social and cultural processes associated with them. Her work engages with mechanisms of remembrance, the search for identity, and the social and cultural processes associated with them. She developed many of her installation projects during residencies in Pakistan (International Diasporic Artists Residency Karachi), Jordan (International Artist Workshop Shatana), Turkey, and Palestine (Al-Mamal Art Residency, Jerusalem) among others. Gaussi has participated in numerous exhibitions, film festivals, and symposia, including the dOCUMENTA 13, the Havana Biennale, and TEDx Marrakesh. She is a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre in Munich and received the Ann Wolff Foundation Scholarship 2023. Jeanno Gaussi currently lives and works in Berlin and Munich, Germany. Katharina Schnitzler, born in Düsseldorf in 1963, is a Berlin-based artist and educator. She obtained a Master of Arts degree from UdK Berlin (1999-2003) and prior to that, she completed a diploma in Art Therapy and Pedagogy from FH Ottersberg (1995-1999). In 2023, Katharina Schnitzler participated in several solo exhibitions including "LUFTHOLEN" at Kunsthaus Potsdam with Ev Pommer, "INNEHALTEN" at Mianki.Gallery with Ev Pommer, and "AUF WUNDER WARTEN" at Alte Feuerwache Berlin with Ev Pommer. In 2022, she was involved in the project "AUFLÖSUNG" by H. Egger and T. Sterna at Documenta 15 in Kassel. In 2021, she exhibited "Look at the birds" with Edith Held at mianki.Gallery in Berlin and "Das Fenster, SYSTEMRELEVANTER DRUCKER" at G.A.S - station in Berlin. In 2020, she participated in "Look at the birds" with Edith Held during BERLIN ARTWEEK at Loft Pohl58 in Berlin. Katharina Schnitzler has participated in various group exhibitions. In 2022, she exhibited at "Uferhallen Aktien" at nbk in Uferhallen Berlin during Art Week, as well as at "TROUBLED NATURE" at Kunst Haus Mitte in Berlin. She also showcased her work at "artKARLSRUHE" and "mianki & friends" at mianki.Gallery in Berlin. In 2021, she participated in "artKARLSRUHE" at mianki.Gallery. In 2020, she was part of the "40 in 40" exhibition at Museum Eberswalde in Eberswalde. She also exhibited at "POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair 2020," "mianki & friends," and "Zeichnungen" at mianki.Gallery in Berlin. Additionally, she showcased her work at "artKARLSRUHE" at mianki.Gallery. Katharina Schnitzler observes, uncovers and questions assumed realities. In her work, she overlays textures, layers of color, and text, and processes fabrics and newspaper photos. Often the background consists of countless layers. As the brushstroke is visible and pulled in different directions, structures, and patterns emerge. In doing so, Schnitzler emphasizes the materiality of her works, as the structures are reminiscent of cut-outs of fabric panels or embossed ornamental wallpaper. Often a sense of space is created. Although the background and foreground could each stand on their own, they communicate and harmonize with each other, depth of color meets abstract formal language. The essence of her work is the exploration of the "in-between". Paintings and drawings are created - installed, poetic, deep, witty, tightly interwoven, and at the same time brutal and beautiful. coming soon...Tuli Mekondjo
Nnenna Onuoha
Angélica Chio
Jeanno Gaussi
Katharina Schnitzler
Bellu & Bellu
3D walkthrough of exhibition:
Installation & Opening Events Images:
