Pauł Sochacki’s humorous painterly excursion into the world of animals uses visual metaphors to question current socio-political conditions. Jens Pecho’s text-based works impugn the conventions of everyday speaking and acting. Ulf Aminde, winner of the City of Cologne’s competition for an NSU memorial on Keupstrasse, presents not only his idea behind this place of encounter, but also its lack of realization. In her latest photo series titled Becoming Native, Evamaria Schaller, an Austrian living in Cologne, examines her genetic heritage and thus calls into question a narrow concept of origin. With her feminist altarpieces, Magdalena Kita responds to stereotypical gender roles and social power structures. In Anna Witt’s 2-channel video installation, the artist lends her voice to a group of young people in Leipzig to jointly develop a modern manifesto, challenge existing social norms, and finally translate these into performative interventions. The video recordings of a concert by the Polish artist Zorka Wollny, based on music and loud work noises, investigate political aspects of noise and rediscover the essence of the human voice within the workplace. Iranian plum jam, Iraqi blackberry jam, Saudi Arabian elderberry juice — Vera Drebusch’s summer harvest from former embassy compounds in Bonn reveals how abstract and surreal political land and border arrangements are.

Vera Drebusch and Florian Egermann will initiate the opening evening with their performance Deutschland, mon amour, which manifests an ambivalent national relationship.