Building Berlin: Of Walls and Waterloos
Daniela Brahm Proclamation Wall & Proclamation Posters 2006–9 Courtesy the artist and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery / photo Robert McNair
While this month marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a bit closer to home there’s an exhibition that considers the German capital’s present and future. The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery’s “Building Berlin,” curated by Vancouver-based artist Germaine Koh (who lived for a time in the iconic city), aims to draw connections between patterns of migration that have influenced both it and its Canadian counterpart, Kitchener, which was also called Berlin until 1916.
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Installation image of “Building Berlin” Left: Karin Sander German National Women’s Soccer Team 1:7 2005 Right: Rui Calçada Bastos Love Map 2003 & Events – Life in a Bush of Ghosts 2008 Courtesy the artists and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery / photo Robert McNair |
Several works in the show suggest trepidation about the artist’s relationship to gentrification. In Daniela Brahm’s Proclamation Wall & Proclamation Posters, a temporary wall, built from two-by-fours and plywood, is covered with handmade posters that use slogan-like phrases to comment on the individual’s role in the face of larger social changes. Other projects, such as Daniel Seiple’s Tear Down This Fence!, take a more tongue-in-cheek approach. As he interviews locals about “life along the border” between Kitchener and Waterloo, Seiple attempts to convince residents to tear down their backyard fences and display them in the gallery. Karin Sander’s miniaturized figures of the German women’s national soccer team, based on body scans of the real-life players, and Lars Ramberg’s neon version of the phrase Ich Verstehe Nur Bahnhof (literally meaning “I only understand train station” or parochially “It’s all Greek to me”) superimposed over train schedules, offer further permutations of Berlin-style levity.
Rounded out with artworks by Nevin Aladag, Rui Calçada Bastos, Jesko Fezer and Axel Wieder, Pia Fuchs, Ingo Gerken and Thom Kubli, “Building Berlin” intends to offer creative ideas about the artful potential of new and old Berlin alike. (101 Queen St N, Kitchener ON)
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Installation image of “Building Berlin” Left: Daniela Brahm Proclamation Wall & Proclamation Posters 2006–9 Right: Lars Ramberg Ich Verstehe Nur Bahnhof 2009 Courtesy the artists and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery / photo Robert McNair |
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