An Artistic Dialogue on a Fictive Crossroad Between Two Weltinnenraums.

‘Every human activity takes place in an environment of things and people; in it, it is localised and without it, it would lose all meaning'. How does history come into shape? What lessons have we learnt? What do we believe in? Where do we come from and where do we go? The exhibition tells of presence in absence, appearance in disappearance, memories and porous membranes, paradise as a human dream, hope and the power of art.

“Walk to the centre of your Weltinnenraum. Leave a card." Popić's and Schwinge's works are both "heteropias"—symbolic spaces of perception, remembered spaces and spaces lived in, in the Foucauldian sense. Schwinge sets miniatures from her Weltinnenraum series in dialogue with the works of Popić. The artists' encounter in a fictitious space may add further dimension. The exhibition takes up the universal theme of Conditio Humana and the ideal of paradise. It opens up new lines of perspective, new realms of ideas, bringing new meaning into the future.

The Artists.

Jovana Popić (b. 1977 in Zadar, Croatia) is a Berlin-based multimedia artist. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and the Berlin University of the Arts (Master's President Award under the class of Prof. Rebecca Horn). Her artifacts are created from traces—of places, memories, ideas and time—which together form a universal recognition. Her installations are heterotopias; navigating through a universe of signs and meanings, in-between spaces.

Madeleine Schwinge is a curator, artist, educator and futurologist. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of art in context, systemic change, and transformative learning. For more than ten years, she has been developing contextualized artworks that transcend media and interact with curatorial, educational, and advisory projects.

The narrative stream is structured around thinkers and artists who have been a source of inspiration to the artists. Among them:

(1) Hannah Arendt, Man, a Social and Political Being, in Man and Politics, Reclam, 2017

(2) Yoko Ono, Card Piece I, in Grapefruit, Simon & Schuster New York, published 1964. The term 'Weltinnenraum', which gives Madeleine Schwinge's series its title, is first introduced by Rainer Maira Rilke in the The Duino Elegies ("...durch alle Wesen reicht der eine Raum: Weltinnenraum"), who refers for his part to Goethe ("Im Innern ist ein Universum auch").

(3) Michel Foucault, The Heteropias. The Utopian Body, Suhrkamp, 2017

(4) For the first time since 2004, the Bertelsmann Foundation's Transformation Index (BTI) records more autocratic than democratic states worldwide.

(5) Günther Vogt/ Violetta Burckhardt, Paradise Now. Die neuen Grenzen des Gartens, DE NATURA VII, Matties & Seitz Berlin, 2021