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Rows I & II

The series Rows comprises braided maps and sound compositions. Rows I centres the M-Straße in Berlin, Germany, and the status of various campaigns to rename it due to the racist nature of the m-word as well as the street’s connections to histories of enslavement, whiles Rows II depicts the 17 other M-Streets located throughout Germany (in Annaberg-Buchholz, Berlin, Bingen am Rhein, Bonn, Coburg, Dillingen an der Donau, Eibenstock, Eisenbeg, Ettlingen, Fürth, Gotha, Kölln, Radebeul, Schwäbisch Hall, Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Wittenberge, Wuppertal). The accompanying sound compositions include recordings the artist made while walking along the street over the past 5 years, including everyday sounds of trains entering the U-Bahn station, and pedestrians walking past, but also sounds of protest, memorial marches, and walking tours that have taken place along the street, as well as interviews with scholars and activists involved in the renaming debate.

Year: 2023

Material: Hair Extensions

Audio Length: 12′, 28′

Audio Languages: English, German

Audio Format: Stereo

Exhibitions:
Soil Conversations. Galerie im Körnerpark. Berlin, DE. 2023.
To Be Named. Haus Kunst Mitte. Berlin, DE. 2023.
Soil Conversations. Johannesburg Art Gallery. SA. 2023.

Exhibitions

Soil Conversations. Galerie im Körnerpark. Berlin, DE. 2023.

Soil Conversations presents nine artistic positions from South Africa and Germany that explore the materiality of earth, our relationship to soil as a basis for life, and earth as a carrier of memory, identity, and future. The exhibition connects two geographical points – the Galerie im Körnerpark in Berlin and the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa. During the runtime, the exhibition itself becomes a research platform and the basis for texts by German and South African writers in relation to the presented artworks and the thematic complexes that are published on this website. Soil Conversations thus unfolds rhizomatically by making curatorial and artistic processes visible beyond the walls of the gallery.

To Be – Named. Haus Kunst Mitte. Berlin, DE. 2023.

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, which was created in cooperation with the 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).

Soil Conversations. Johannesburg Art Gallery. SA. 2023.

Soil Conversations presents nine artistic positions from South Africa and Germany that explore the materiality of earth, our relationship to soil as a basis for life, and earth as a carrier of memory, identity, and future. The exhibition connects two geographical points – the Galerie im Körnerpark in Berlin and the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa. During the runtime, the exhibition itself becomes a research platform and the basis for texts by German and South African writers in relation to the presented artworks and the thematic complexes that are published on this website. Soil Conversations thus unfolds rhizomatically by making curatorial and artistic processes visible beyond the walls of the gallery.

Rows. Nnenna Onuoha. Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Rows. Nnenna Onuoha. Johannesburg Art Gallery.