Exhibition at the Kunstverein Ost: Pain in long-distance relationships

Two figures stand in a meadow. They are covered with a shiny silver foil that flutters in the wind and is reminiscent of the material with which Christo and Jeanne-Claude once had the Reichstag wrapped. Now human figures are hidden inside. The video loop is part of the installation “By Law” by Lesia Pcholka & Uladzimir Hramovich, currently on view in the exhibition “Long Distance Relationships” at the Kunstverein Ost. Both come from Belarus and had to leave their homeland after the defeated revolution.

Cracked concrete elements, such as those often found on the side of motorways, are spread out in front of the video wall. Gray flowers grow out of them. The artist couple picked up the concrete fragments in Berlin, where they now live, Hramovich tells the Tagesspiegel.

Migration as a complex experience

The flowers themselves come from a 3D printer and use the flowers, which are in the shape of national borders, to symbolize the states through which both pass: Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany.

They are also the flowers of those countries in which the couple had previously unsuccessfully tried to get married. “It’s not just about love and promising to be there for each other. For migrants like us, the most important thing is a safe place,” emphasizes Hramovich. The fact that getting married hasn’t worked so far is mainly due to the difficulties in getting the right documents together in the current time frame.

Adopted family in the USA

“By Law” is an installation of futility. Zofia nierodzińska acts from the perspective of those left behind. The Polish artist and curator, who also had the idea for the exhibition, brought three large canvases with her. One shows the Polish airline LOT plane on which her father flew to New York in the 1990s.

A second canvas depicts her as a child with her mother and siblings who remained in Poland. The third summarizes what Nierodzińska knows primarily from stories: the social substitute family that her father found in the USA with his work colleagues, who also came from Poland. She describes her relationship with her father’s chosen social family as complex: “There is relief, but also sadness, perhaps jealousy.”

She initiated the exhibition because, on the one hand, migration is increasingly moving onto the political agenda, in Germany and Poland. “But the problem is that you talk very little to people who actually have migration experience. We want to bring migration closer and show that it is actually a completely normal, common and everyday experience,” she says.

In the global art world, migration is often a necessary prerequisite for success, because the industry’s hotspots in particular promise access to curators, gallery owners and collectors. Political and social consequences of migration are also addressed. However, the everyday perspective of artists who are affected by emigration themselves or through their families is rarely given a place. In this regard, the Kunstverein Ost is doing pioneering work.

A very toxic component of long-distance relationships is revealed by the example of Hramovich. “We always have to think about what we say. Because I still have family in Belarus,” he says. He also thought it was likely that embassy representatives were present at the opening: “They read the newspapers, they go to diaspora cultural events. Berlin is full of Russian spies anyway, that’s no secret. It’s similar with Belarus.”

He’s not paranoid, just realistic, he says sarcastically. Further works come from Alicja Rogalska, who comes from Poland and lives in Berlin, and Aykan Safoğlu, who commutes between Istanbul and Berlin.