How do artists, curators and writers talk about Northern Eurasia? Beginning tomorrow evening, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt will present various chapters from which a fragmentary narrative of the region emerges as part of a new exhibition As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories. The show roams the territory of northern Eurasia, casting spotlights on more than a dozen countries that were first in the territory or sphere of influence of the Russian Empire, and later in the Soviet Union. Equal parts presentation and research project, the show chronicles control and resistance, pain and self-empowerment. The fact that the narrative takes detours in the process and is composed in a collage-like manner is reflected in the title of the exhibition: it refers to a poem by the Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali from 1990 – a time when the USSR was slowly dissolving. Ali dedicates it to the situation in his violence-plagued homeland and at the same time references the Polish-Jewish-Soviet poet Ossip Mandelstam, who died in a labor camp near Vladivostok in 1938. In the exhibition title, verses by the two poets are interwoven into a stanzaic line.
The fragmentary nature underlying this procedure also connects the show’s various temporal levels and narrative strands on a large scale. Only amid ambiguity and complexity can one attempt to understand what has moved the region in the past and where it is headed in the future. The Peruvian artist Sergio Zevallos is also concerned with regaining control over one’s own self in times of oppression. The HKW is dedicating a solo exhibition to him that looks back on his 40 years of work. Exercises in Transformation looks at dominant systems of knowledge and presents strategies for subverting them. In doing so, Zevallos repeatedly uses his own body as a starting point for ways out of a society determined by colonialism and capitalism. Zevallos’ performances are painful and intimate, but instead of relying on grand gestures, ultimately it is the incidental poetics found in nuances that outlast structures and situations.
Text: Laura Storfner / Credit: Sergio Zevallos; Jaanus Samma, Temnikova & Kasela Gallery; Auseklis Baušķenieks / Photos: Ansis Starks
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John–Foster–Dulles–Allee 10, 10557 Berlin–Mitte; map
Wed–Mon 12–19h
As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories: Fragments for a Geopoetics of North Eurasia 21.10.2023–14.01.2024
Exercises in Transformation—Sergio Zevallos Exhibition, Archive, Performances, Publication 21.10.2023–14.01.2024 Opening 20.10.2023
Free entry every Monday and every first Sunday of the month (Museum Sunday).
@hkw_berlin
