Participating artists:Shirin Abedi, Cihan Çakmak, Hannah Darabi, Raisan Hameed und Aslı Özdemir
Venue:Literaturhaus St. Jakobi
Jakobikirchgasse
31134 Hildesheim
With sensitive artistic expressiveness, the artists work on (auto)documentary fragments
(auto-)documentary fragments and use individual and diverse perspectives to negotiate
perspectives to negotiate the turbulent world events characterized by contradictions.
The boundaries between personal and global pasts, which extend into the present, are
which extend into the present, become permeable and fluid in the artists'
permeable and fluid and find their way into reflections on family biographies and identity constructions. The processual and recurring element of resistance and the resistance, as well as the diversity of its inherent expressive possibilities, and narrative voices can be found in the selected artistic positions.
The exhibition title "Which photo is looking at you?" refers to Katja Petrovskaya's book "Das Foto schaute mich an" (2022). In her writing about Petrovskaya combines memories, her own stories and historical contextualization and thus shows the connection between individual and collective memory. Petrovskaya gives readers an insight into her own engagement with photographs. The Kunstverein adopts this method and asks visitors directly "Which photo is looking at you?". The title becomes becomes a guide to action and encourages visitors to engage with the artworks in a personal to engage with the artworks in a personal way. The exhibition examines the question on different levels, with direct glances from self-portraits, with artistic- documentary insights into places and situations, or with staged retrospectives in family archives. But there are also coded, abstract and not directly visible views from the photographs await visitors. The initial question raises further questions, it leads to the question of content: What is it about the photo that stops me?
The exhibition "Which photo is looking at you?" takes place in cooperation with the
Literaturhaus St. Jakobi and the KUNSTRAUM53.
Curated by Carla Henne, Noa Lohrmann and Justine Wiesner.
