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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2021
Exhibition
Sandra Johnston and Richard Ashrowan, That Apart, 2019, multipart video work, installation view; photograph © Deutscher Künstlerbund, courtesy of the artists
SOME PLACES IN Berlin today still bear a certain tension which reflects
A Space Between ALBERT WEIS DISCUSSES ‘THE BORDER’ AT DEUTSCHER KÜNSTLERBUND, BERLIN.
the postwar era of the divided city. A similar kind of tension is also visible in some parts of Northern Ireland, where fences, provisional walls, abandonned army posts and waste lands mark the former border. Close to where the wall once stood in Berlin’s city centre, which once divided the city into east and west, the Deutsche Künstlerbund (a nationwide association of German artists) hosted an exhibiton about the Northern Irish issue, titled ‘the border’, which was scheduled to run from 11 September to 13 November 2020. The exhibition examines the ways in which history is constructed and how it affects the daily lives of citizens. ‘The border’ concerns itself with the conflict in Northern Ireland and the underlying forces of identity, nationalism and religion. Looking back to the Troubles, it is possible to understand how political tensions emerge, what dangers they harbour and how fragile democratic societies can be. Northern Ireland, however, also represents how a violent conflict can be overcome. Following Brexit, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will become an exterior European border. This will potentially result in a further partition of the island of Ireland, which some worry could be the trigger for new troubles. This project grew out of visits to Belfast at very different times – once when the walls and war infrastructure still were present, and later, when they became witnesses of the past. In the exhibition at Deutsche Künstlerbund, the space was divided into different zones by a metal structure, forcing the visitor to decide for him or herself how to behave and how to move within these spaces. The structure is reminiscent of the provisional barriers in Belfast, separating neighbourhoods and protecting premises from violence. The structure also supplied space for Sandra Johnston’s multipart video work, That Apart, and text-based work, Wait it Out – both of which were
