UNBOUND
An Accessible and Flexible Residency for Artists with and without Disabilities
UNBOUND is Germany’s first flexible and accessible residency and exhibition program for artists with and without disabilities working across multiple disciplines. A flexible and accessible residency means that artists are supported financially, creatively and can carry out the residency at a location, pace and scale that suits them best.
The program runs from October 2022 to July 2023 and is funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Inneres und Sport in connection with the Special Olympics, which will be held in Berlin in June 2023. The project is a pilot project that we hope will develop into a permanent feature of Berlin’s cultural landscape. We will create a Handbook at the end of the project to document our experiences and the feedback of our participating artists.
We have invited a diverse group of six artists to participate in the residency who will each receive a grant to create a new work in response to the theme of “connection”, exchange with other artists in a series of creative workshops, receive one-on-one mentoring and show their work in a culminating exhibition during the Special Olympics in June 2023.
Our Artists in Residence
Heike Bollig is a Berlin-based visual artist and art educator. After an apprenticeship as a wood sculptor at the Berufsfachschule für Schreinerei und Holzbildhauerei in Berchtesgaden, Bollig studied sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and media art at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe from 1997 to 2004. Bollig’s artistic work includes various long-term projects in which she deals with everyday culture, parallel economies, and the question of what influence context has on the perception of art. She gained international attention with the long-term project Errors in Production, which is dedicated to errors in industrial production.
Credit: Stange und Spirale (Plakat), 2012, 59,4 x 84 cm, Ausstellungsansicht „Amateurism“, Heidelberger Kunstverein 2004.
Catherine Rose Evans is a Berlin-based Australian artist and writer who works across photography, sculpture, installation and text. Her work focuses on geologic time and where this intersects with our own human timescales: as found in our bodies, their materiality and our lived-histories as they unfold against geophysical forces. Initially trained in science, and then photography, her work is characterised by a material intimacy that subverts the utility of everyday materials such as rocks and carpet to give unexpected shifts in our perception of light, weight, scale and balance.
After completing her studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, Naarm/Melbourne, she was recipient of a VCA Graduate Mentorship (2013) and Georges Mora Fellowship (2017). She has exhibited widely, most recently her work Standing Stone won first prize in the 2020 Neuköllner Kunstpreis, Berlin. In 2022 she will be an artist in residence at MASSMoCA, Massachusetts US.
Photo by Piotr Pietrus
Rita Mazza is a deaf queer freelance artist, actress, visual sign performer and dancer. She received several awards for her lead role of Sarah in God’s Forgotten Children with Theater Artisti Associati Company in Italy. Additionally, Rita Mazza also serves as the artistic director of Festival del Silenzio, an international performing arts event focused on sign language and deaf arts. She speaks Italian Sign Language fluently as well as German, French and International Sign. Since 2010 Rita Mazza has lived in Berlin and is currently working as an artistic director and performer on visual sign performances in Berlin. She has a longstanding collaboration with Making A Difference.
image: Dandelion II, Sophiensaele, January 2022 (credit: Mayra Wallraff)
Born in 1979 in Stendal Dennis Meier is a Berlin based visual artist working across a variety of media including painting, wall drawings and installations and site specific works in public space. He has exhibited in both Germany and France in such recent shows as Slumber, Frontviews Berlin, Man ist nicht behindert, man wird behindert, oqbo – Raum für Bild, Wort und Ton, Appartement, Berlin, Manic 3, Maniac Episode 3, Künstlerhaus Dosenfabrik, Hamburg, retraho, betahaus, Berlin and Painting and the like, Paris CONCRET, Paris.
https://www.instagram.com/remiemeier/
With his collages and sculptural assemblages, the Berlin artist Macks Querfeldt creates a universe of his own – he uses everyday found materials (newspaper clippings, packaging, pieces of wood, flyers with lettering and pictures), in order to lure out meaningful and meaningless levels of association through adaptations such as overpainting and gluing over in the Dada tradition, which can be quite subversive. Macks Querfeldt has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Germany and has exhibited work in a solo exhibition at Galerie Art Cru in 2020: “Launch-Na klar”.
Asako Shiroki was born in Japan in 1979.
“Through the forms of fragments of furniture and architecture such as a chair, table, lattice or wooden frame, my works provoke physical memories of forms and evoke the viewer’s individual memories. At the same time, while forms consistently remain as fragments, imagined function is suspended, floating around without a destination and blurring the outline of these memories. As you follow the blurred memories beyond the haze, it feels as if you have stepped into a different place, as you become more sensitive to sound, scent, resistance of the air, and colors that you have never been aware of. In this moment, you are likely looking on happenings with a bird’s-eye view more on ‘your’ side, as the amount of buoyancy slightly exceeds that of gravity”
The Exhibition
Vernissage:
5-9 pm June 10th 2023
5.30 pm: Official Opening Speech by the State Secretary of Sport Dr. Nicola Böcker-Giannini
(German Sign Language provided)
Exhibition Opening Hours:
Wed-Fri 1-7 pm, Sat & Sun 12-5 pm
Mi-Fr 13-19 Uhr, Sa & So 12-17 Uhr
June 10-July 16
Address: CLB Berlin, Aufbau Haus at Moritzplatz, Prinzenstraße 84.2, 10969 Berlin
About the exhibition:
What does connection mean and what does connection require? How are we all connected to each other as human beings, how do we connect to the non-human world around us, and what happens when we dis-connect?
The Space Between brings together the work of six artists seeking to answer these questions. The exhibition is the result of Germany’s first accessible multi-disciplinary artist residency program, which has been made possible through the cultural program of the Special Olympics. The exhibition thus takes its departure from the central concept of the games itself: connection. The spirit of the games lies in the act of bringing together athletes with learning disabilities based on their individual sporting talents, yet forges a connection between them as a team of collaborators. This solidarity is necessary for winning medals, just as solidarity between disabled and nondisabled people is necessary for resisting everyday ableism.
Our 6 artists are diverse in gender, (dis)ability, age, and ethnicity and produce work in a variety of formats including painting, sculpture, photography, sound, performance, installation and poetry. Each of them has developed a new work in response to the theme of connection from their diverse perspectives. For example, Macks Querfeldt through his multi-media collages, explores how we are all inherently connected to war, such as the current conflict in the Ukraine and it’s impact on chains of supply and demand, and the need to forge solidarity with others for survival. Similarly, with her socially engaged practice, Heike Bollig explores the role of connecting to one another through the human processes of healing and repairing. Catherine Rose Evans on the other hand, explores the science of connection by investigating gravity and tension through manipulating every day found objects. And finally, how we are (dis)connected to one another by language and communication is considered by Rita Mazza through visual sign performance, Dennis Meier via a poetic wall drawing utilizing Braille text, and Asako Shiroki whose sculptural installations explore perception by acting as translators between humans and the natural word.
Accessibility:
Directions: The U8 subway line and the bus line M29 both stop at Moritzplatz directly in front of Aufbau Haus.
From the subway stop Moritzplatz (no elevator), it is 100 meters to the CLB. From the bus stop Moritzplatz it is 25 meters to the CLB.
The main entrance to the event room (with the large window) is located on the right side of Aufbau Haus on the ground floor – directly accessible from the sidewalk on Oranienstrasse.
Entrance: The main entrance consists of a double-leaf door made of glass and metal, which opens inwards. Opening hours vary therefore, to be on the safe side, always check the website under the respective event announcement.
WC: Toilets are located in the gallery. A barrier-free toilet is located inside the building complex and can be reached via an elevator. We will be happy to show you the way.
During the exhibition opening a quiet rest room will be available.
A variety of cafes can be found in the Aufbauhaus complex: https://www.aufbauhaus.de/
Assistant and guide dogs are welcome.
If you need assistance, please speak to us on site or contact us by phone: 030 695 37 08 18 or email: kontakt@clb-berlin.de
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UNBOUND is financed by
and supported by the following partners
image credit: From the “Seed Project” by Kirstin Naomie Broussard
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