I enjoy going to exhibitions happening outside exhibition venues, mostly because there is a chance to meet people who will usually not go to art shows. It took place in the outside spaces of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, facing Niederkirchner and Stresemann Street. What I could observe was that these families were the usual art audience: artists, curators, architects, and other creative and art-interested people.
While I was there, I met some curators and artists with their kids, whom I am friends with. That day, I was lucky to meet one of the curators of the programme, Joanna Warsza, who gave us an introduction of some of the works. But, who is missing in this show? The neighbourhood and those who live close to the Gropius Bau. As known, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is located right at the former border between East and West Berlin.
Today, this area is close to Potsdamer Platz train station and to a shopping mall, poorly attended after its renovation. Other than the office buildings and shopping areas at Potsdamer Platz, the neighbourhood surrounding the Gropius Bau is characterised for its cheap housing facilities and social housing projects. I remember visiting some years ago an artist friend, who organised with other artists a sewing workshop for refugee women, mainly from Syria. These workshops, with the intention to facilitate a possibility for future income by means of clothing repair, were held at an empty hotel on Stresemann Street, which was also used to give shelter to several other refugees from the Middle East.
It presented the history of playgrounds in different parts of the world since the late 19th century. This show constructed an artificial setting of inclusion that in the end reproduced the exclusivity of the art world.
This article was also published in Medium. What do the Dalit in India have in common with indigenous art from the Amazonas region in Peru, the Mapuche from Chile or the Afro-communities in Brazil? Resistance, resistance, resistance. While the caste system existed before the British colony ca. Another example of decontextualisation happens with the inclusion of art by popular artists from the Amazonas region the shipibo-conibo community from Pucallpa. These and other indigenous groups suffered from the consequences of the rubber boom extractivism in the Amazon basin ca.
