Making Kin

The exhibition Making Kin brings together the works of artists from Canada, South Korea, Nigeria, Ghana, Myanmar, Germany, Estonia, Uzbekistan, and the US. Their various practices are interconnected by the understanding that we are all woven into a dynamic fabric of relationships: not only with other people, animals, plants, spiritual beings, and the cosmos but also with our office chairs. This relational world view is linked to criticism of (colonial) regimes of violence and exploitation as well as state ideologies that reduce the diversity of relationships to models based on the nuclear family and to rigid forms of belonging. The artists resist the loss of connections, knowledge, biodiversity, languages and aesthetics and counter it with an exploration of marginalized forms of knowledge and relationship.

There are four central themes: belonging and community; entanglements between human and non-human collectives; the revitalization and passing on of devalued knowledge cultures; and cultural memory and intergenerational exchange.

The transcultural diversity of the artistic approaches turns the exhibition space into a pluriverse and invites visitors to weave their own connections.

Participating artists: Catherine Blackburn, Aziza Kadyri, Mae-ling Lokko, Meryl McMaster, Caroline Monnet, Katja Novitskova, Soe Yu Nwe, Odun Orimolade, Judith Raum, Cara Romero, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Haegue Yang

The exhibition was curated by: Kerstin Pinther, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art in Global Context & Ute Marxreiter, Research Associate for Education and Outreach, Ethnologisches Museum and Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz