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until 23.04. | #0416ARTatBerlin | The gallery cubus-m presents from the 12th March 2016 the exhibition TRIBE FIRE by the artist Shira Wachsmann.
Shira Wachsmann investigates the circles that people form while they create ever-new tribe fires to gather around. Those circles intensify religious rituals and justify territorial aspirations. They construct contemporary identities around historical
memories and materialistic fantasies. And in Wachsmann’s upcoming solo exhibition TRIBE FIRE, these circles spiral into absurd.
In her new installation and video works, collages and drawings, Wachsmann confronts the spectators with a range of circles from our times, and invites us to take a position by the fire. She visualizes the elements that compose identities in their most raw forms. Here, next to the circle and the fire, masks appear, surrounding diamonds. Gas masks, collectively worn by individuals during modern warfare, as means of protection for each member belonging to the group, remind a tribal ceremony. And all through the spins and loops of history, the fire of violent conflicts has been fueled by economical desires, shaped around natural materials that were loaded with value – like diamonds. Provocatively and humorously, Wachsmann demonstrates how bizarre and ridiculous all these destructive behaviors really are.
Always the result of a deep and sensitive research, Wachsmann’s projects expose the suppressed history that is still actively shaping today’s consciousness in the different places where she lives and works. She critically shows links between German
colonialist enterprises in Namibia and the mechanisms of the Nazi regime, and also analyses the construction of Israeli identity around borders, separation and security industry. These phenomena are connected and repeating one another. Could there be a way out of the historical spiral, endlessly expanding? Could we ever step out of the circle, as long as we, too, “demand our place in the sun”*?
Text: Michal B. Ron
*„wir wollen niemand in den Schatten stellen, aber wir verlangen auch unseren Platz an der Sonne“ – Bernhard
von Bülow, 1897
Shira Wachsmann (born in Israel, 1984) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Arts Berlin Weissensee, where she also completed the Master Class Program. Wachsmann had the solo exhibitions “Poetiken des Politischen” in Espace Surplus, Berlin (2013) and “Metrotopie” with Anne Duk Hee Jordan at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011). With Jordan she also showed the performance “UNBORDERED | Public Performances” at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2014). Among the group shows she participated are “Vot ken you mach”, Kunsthaus Dresden (2013) and Muzeum Wspolczesne in Wroclaw, Poland (2015), “Archaeologies of the Future”, Gallery Campagne Première, Berlin (2013), and PREVIEW Berlin (2012). Wachsmann’s works were also exhibited at Goethe Institute Burkina Faso (2011), as well as in Budapest, Marseille, Munich and Tel Aviv. Furthermore, she received a scholarship for film and video from the senate of Berlin (2014), and screened her video work “Without Borders” at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin (2015).
TRIBE FIRE is her first solo show with gallery cubus-m.
Vernissage: Friday, 11th March 2016, 7:00 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 12th March to Saturday, 23rd April 2016
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Image caption: Shira Wachsmann: Endless Circle (video still) | 2016 | video | dur. 9:00 min | photo: Merav Maroody, © Shira Wachsmann
Shira Wachsmann Exhibition – cubus-m – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin
