Cosmos: Agendas, Networks, Friendships

An exhibition project presented by the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation.

Making Public is a series of six exhibitions examining the Centre for Art Exhibitions of the GDR (Zentrum für Kunstausstellungen der DDR or ZfK), whose inventory of prints was transferred to the ifa in 1991. The ZfK pursued the German Democratic Republic’s cultural policy in connection with its international relations. Today’s examination offers new perspectives on the relationship between art and the state. The project is a cooperation with the ifa Gallery Berlin, Schloss Biesdorf, the Kunstverein Ost (KVOST), the Prater Gallery, and the Galerie im Turm.

The exhibition at Schloss Biesdorf showcases artworks from the collection of the ZfK, the ifa and the Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life / Beeskow Art Archive, as well as works on loan from artists’ estates. This selection offers insights into cosmoses that reveal the remarkable diversity of the GDR’s artistic production, indicating that spaces of creative freedom found ways to flourish despite state surveillance and control. Cosmos presents artworks from this liminal realm and teases out strategies of defiance, tracing networks formed in the areas surrounding Berlin – in the shadow of official state cultural institutions. A round table that recalls the work DDR Noir by the post-reunification artist Henrike Naumann provides a central motif.

The exhibition series in Berlin is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (HKF).