ALIENS ANYWHERE

International Jewish artists living in Berlin negotiate German history, migration, memory and identity. Historical and current realities of life are analysed equally in the context of the visual arts.


Part I: 9 May to 8 June 2025

Erez Israeli - sculpture, painting, photography / David Krippendorff - drawing, video / Joachim Seinfeld - photography, installation object art
Opening on Thursday, 8 May 2025, 7 pm

With his The Pretzelman Cathedral Project (2018-21), Erez Israeli creates hybrid sculptural-sacral icons that explore Germanness as a projection surface. His photo series Human and the Sun (2014) deconstructs Nazi body aesthetics.

David Krippendorff's film Kali (2017) translates Brecht's Pirate Jenny into Arabic, interpreted by the Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass. In Silent Prayer (2019-23), he transforms Ravel's Kaddish into a minimalist score of ink drops - a symbol of loss.

Joachim Seinfeld's project Souvenir Photograph (1994-2004) scrutinises unreflected tourist photos at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In Wenn Deutsche lustig sind - Dokufiktion (2005-25), he satirically stages himself as both perpetrator and victim in historical archive images using digital montage. In his third position, Seinfeld uses the modern artist's image as a target for his critical humour: in Save the Day, he stages iconic but ironically refracted moments of art history - from Schwitters to Beuys - in diorama-like installations, thus playfully questioning the myth of genius.


Part II: 20 June to 13 July 2025

Sharon Paz - video, interactive video installation / Hadas Tapouchi - photography / Simon Wachsmuth - photo and audio installation, installation
Opening on Thursday, 19 June 2025, 7 pm

Sharon Paz' interactive video installation Dare to Dream (2020) thematises fascist propaganda in the context of the 1936 Olympic Games. The video work Homesick (2017), inspired by Borchert's The Kitchen Clock, combines war traumas with current humanitarian crises. With the text-audio installation Broken Sky (2024), Paz transfers the murder of Rosa Luxemburg to our present day in an almost physically emotional way.
Hadas Tapouchi's work series Memory Practice: Berlin Transforming (since 2013) photographically maps the material traces of forced labour camps in Berlin and Brandenburg.

Simon Wachsmuth's Ich arbeite, ich raube Tag und Nacht (2021/22) combines Kleist's and Lasker-Schüler's existential fears with a sleep and text performance. His rubbings of epitaphs from the 30 Years' War are condensed in the Meinblau project space into a concretely poetic “conceptual forest” of black metal steles (2025).

ALIENS ANYWHERE

Special event: Conflict Middle East - division of the art world?
Sunday, 25 May 2025, 5.30 pm
Lectures and subsequent discussion by and with Saba-Nur Cheema (political scientist and publicist) and Meron Mendel (historian, director of the Anne Frank Educational Centre, Frankfurt am Main).
Idea and moderation: Joachim Seinfeld
The event will be held in German.

Meron Mendel and Saba-Nur Cheema have been involved in Jewish-Muslim dialogue for many years, working against anti-Semitism and hostility towards Muslims and dealing in particular with the effects of the Middle East conflict on our coexistence in Germany.


Location: Meinblau project space, Pfefferberg Haus 5, Christinenstraße 18/19, 10119 Berlin
Exhibition opening hours: Thursday to Sunday, 2-7pm, free admission