Wo Wir Schon Mal Hier Sind

Emma Adler

Rebekka Benzenberg

Cathrin Hoffmann

Jody Korbach

Mary-Audrey Ramirez

Sophia Süßmilch

The artists, together with Galerie Martinetz, extend an invitation: they transform a private flat in Berlin-Neukölln into a temporary salon for an entire weekend. Emerging from a moment of community, solidarity, and resistance, they create a space for discussion, exchange, and networking.

Salon des Refusés. Salon des Indépendants. Salon des Enragés? Salon des Bruyants! A place of visibility, a space for discourse, an antidote to the institutionalized art world. Historically created as a reaction to exclusion and becoming an expression of artistic self-assertion, in the face of cultural policy developments, the salon seems more necessary today than ever. Whose voices remain heard if the financial means are lacking? Who will be most affected by future cuts? Those who are already underrepresented within the institutionalized art world.

By means of this exhibition, the six artists create a platform of solidarity. The works shown unite in unmasking apparent social norms, revealing traditional anti-feminist narratives and ideologies behind their seemingly harmless bourgeois facades. ‘Wo Wir Schon Mal Hier Sind.' questions patriarchal structures and normative representations and calls for critical perspectives on our contemporary pop and everyday culture. The works oscillate between reality and fiction, between the digital and physical realm. Manipulated images, pop-cultural codes, and sculptural and painterly interventions come together to create a poetic reflection on truth, construction, and visibility.

Misogynistic and New Right ideologies are omnipresent in the seemingly intimate public spheres of social media. Supposedly harmless yearnings for ‘traditional' values become ideological weapons – with the Tradwife movement being just one of many examples. Under the guise of a nostalgic image of women and family, a reactionary ideal of femininity is established that is proving to be accessible to the social mainstream. The works exhibited here take a stand against this: loudly, humorously, bitingly, and defiantly. They play with expectations, turn classic narratives into the absurd, and pose the question: Who is telling our story, and which images determine our perception.

The private is political – and this salon makes it visible.

—Anna Holms