Deadly Matters — Exhibition on life in the light of death

Aglaya says:
“In the creation of this installation, I conducted a personal experiment. I planned the date of my own death and observed my sensations as that date approached. Anxiety and panic gave way to an exaggerated curiosity. I wanted to see, hear, and feel everything around me. The birds’ songs, flowers blooming one by one, the city’s sounds at different times of the day. All of these, once seen as repetitive cycles, became unique experiences. I realized that no two days could be lived the same way. It was as if life itself decided to remind me of its omnipresence – “I am everywhere.”

On the appointed day, I stood in front of the mirror. Here it was, everything I have. Every wrinkle, freckle, scar, and gray hair. These are my stories, the experiences that have brought me to where I am now. I cherish every detail I perceive. I am grateful for what I have. This will stay with me until the end.”

The installation “The Call of Silence” takes you on an audio journey through the entire cycle of life, of which death is an integral part. Natallia seeks to depict the auditory dimensions of life and death. She asks herself whether silence is frightening or relieving and wonders what it is made of. 

To listen to the music piece, please scan the QR code with your phone and use your own headphones. During the guided tour, headphones are provided.

Sascha recognised the fear of death as an oppressor of a joyful life and through her work on an installation seeks to free herself from it. She uses meditative forms such as embroidery and poetry, and with every stitch wishes to come to terms with her own mortality. The intuition for this practice comes from her study of Zen tradition and practice of yoga.

Sasha says:
“I feel that fear of death comes from a false assumption that this life belongs to us, and when we die we lose something. We appear in the world without asking for it: as individuals we do not contribute to our birth, do not initiate it at our will. So how come that we start to “possess” life, grasp, hurdle, and su er when some of our “property” disappears? I wrote these six poems with an intention to let go of the pain of losing of your identity, your memories, what you love and what you hold to be real”.

During the exhibition, Katya Romanova opens a pop-up café called “Berlin Bones” at the meadow of Georgien-Parochial Cemetery. Here, she holds talks and shared meals that create space for sharing memories, feelings, and experiences about death and commemoration. Food, as an element of mourning rituals, becomes a focal point of the exploration. The restaurant name pays homage to the story of the meadow where our table stands. This meadow holds remnants discovered during excavation works for building construction in the northern part of the cemetery.

Katya asks:
“Can sharing food become a source of comfort and consolidation? What insights can we gain from the diverse cultures represented in Berlin? What cemeteries could offer as places of mourning & memory?”

Anna creates a space filled with fractured childhood memories behind the grave gates.
Using nostalgic objects she materializes the poignant story of her grandmother Larisa, who was abandoned by her parents as a kid and brought from Manchuria, China to Ukraine. Larisa constructed a vague, dreamlike image of the family she never knew and passed this vision on to Anna.

Anna says:
“Grandmother Larisa was just four when her father, who was a Soviet diplomat  in Manchuria, was executed after being accused of espionage. He was a Jew, and for the late 1930s  that was almost synonymous with being an “enemy of the people” in the Soviet political ideology. Larisa’s mother, seeking to secure her daughter’s future, left her with a family in Ukraine.

Through assumptions and imaginative speculation I tried to envision my grandmother’s childhood in Manchuria. Conscious of transgenerational traumas, I seek to process my grandmother’s narratives and the deep emotions of an abandoned child with a fractured identity.

Larisa didn’t have the memory of her parents’ faces. She had only a few keepsakes: silver spoons engraved with the family initials and a valuable Japanese tapestry. Once, in Kaluga, Russia, she met a woman who had known her mother. The woman recounted how Larisa’s parents loved hosting parties and entertaining guests in their home in Manchuria.

The installation’s soundscape features the waltz “On the Hills of Manchuria” by Nikolai Nazarov, performed by the Orchestra of the USSR Defense Ministry.”

Tanya transforms archival images into collages that explore the decay of sensory perceptions that take place with the end of life. Her work is based on the understanding that death, much like life, is a sensory journey marked by a myriad of experiences – from the final breaths to the silence that follows.

Tanya says:
“The main medium here are archival photographs from cemeteries and funerals. The colored images are woven into collages, creating a narrative that is both fragmented and cohesive, much like the nature of memory and sensory perception”.

With “In Between”, Mascha searches for a form for the intangible transition of being alive to no longer being alive. She is fascinated by the shadowy interior of a crypt and explores with her work whether the stony emptiness really suggests the end of living. The sound for the installation was created by Natallia Kunitskaya.

Masha says:
“I tried to visualize the transition of matter and its energy into new states. The “Law of conservation of energy” states: in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. Many traditions and ritual practices describe the transition into death as the transformation of matter into light – waves of massless particles of photons, that travel with the highest speed in the universe. “In Between” shows how a permanent transformation takes place even in an allegedly lifeless space of crypt”.