Wordless — Falling Silent Loudly

[Translate to English:] Der Begriff

The exhibition looks at various experiences of violence from a global and, at the same time, differentiated perspective. Literature and poetry, works by artists and activists, and the stories behind the objects in the Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen collection are woven together to relate these experiences to one another.

[Translate to English:] Ausgehend

Drawing on the poetic resilience of literature, the exhibition explores ways of overcoming a silence that continues to impact contemporary life. Nevertheless, it is also informed by what Hannah Arendt called "poetic thinking": in poetry, what is invisible becomes visible. It has the power to recast concepts and to draw attention to other traumatic experiences. This approach becomes apparent in the trail of poetry: it accompanies and comments on the exhibition. In examining the respective historical and social causes, language becomes a path and a method of empathic remembering. 

[Translate to English:] Zitat

Erreichbar, nah, und unverloren blieb inmitten der Verluste dies eine: die Sprache. […] Aber Sie musste hindurchgehen durch ihre eigenen Antwortlosigkeiten, hindurchgehen durch furchtbares Verstummen, hindurchgehen durch die tausend Finsternisse todbringender Rede.

[Translate to English:] Dabei steht

By entering the museum, objects of everyday life, works of art, ritual objects, and works of political representation became part of a museological order. They became "ethnological objects." The provenances and acquisition contexts of the collections of the Museums of Ethnology in Dresden and Leipzig reveal the shared yet unequal histories of colonialism, structural violence, and racism. A central concern of the exhibition is to make colonial heritage, injustice, and robbery visible, as well as the efforts to make amends to the communities of origin.

[Translate to English:] Im Japanischen Palais

In the Japanisches Palais, these objects enter into dialogue with works by artists and activists. Through this, a web of relationships is created in which questions about connections and the (in) translatability of experiences become tangible and audible through their ambivalence.  

The visitors are invited to contribute to this project actively: With an accompanying performative program and the corresponding publication, the Diskursbuch Sprachlosigkeit (Discourse on Speechlessness), the exhibition creates a space for people to act and speak – together, they pursue the utopia of a future beyond speechlessness and conceive scopes within which empathic remembering and common speaking are possible.

Katharina Balzer | unverblümt

The graphic design studio unverblümt (“blunt”), based in Dresden, was founded by designer Katharina Balzer. The office develops together with project partners various solutions of varying sizes. Her credo is: “unverblümt is the way to express something straightforwardly”.  

For the Dresden State Art Collections, unverblümt has already designed the public presentation media for the exhibition Madonna meets Mao - Selected Works from the Collection of the Yageo Foundation, Taiwan (2008) as well as the print media for the exhibition Tecumseh Keokuk Black Hawk – Portraits of Indians in the Era of Treaties and Removal (2013). In April 2021, the publication (un)told Vision Osthaus - Collector, Patron, Founder, designed by unverblümt, was published for the Damascus Room in the Japanisches Palais. 

For the exhibition Sprachlosigkeit, unverblümt, working with designer and musician Enrico Wuttke, was responsible for the overall graphic and spatial conception.  Balzer worked closely with the collective “kaboom” and the community curator Ute Puder. The result is a poetic design concept that reflects the multifacetedness of the exhibition.  

Katharina Balzer lives and works in Dresden.

Anna S. Brägger

Anna S. Brägger is the initiator of Rola sjećanja (Commemorative Scroll). In her artistic and therapeutic work, she creates intimate, mediating experiences between people and the space that surrounds them.  

Since 2003, as part of her work for the association Südost Europa Kultur, she has been creating the Commemorative Scroll – a participatory work of textile art and memory commemorating those killed in the wars in Southeastern Europe since the 1990s. The scroll consists of handkerchiefs embroidered by bereaved family members with the names and life dates of their loved ones. These women, by embroidering together, find the opportunity to express their grief intimately. Brägger assembles the individual scarves into extensive lengths of fabric, now more than 50 meters long.  

The Commemorative Scroll is a processual, performative and growing memorial of an empathetic and contemporary culture of remembrance.  

Anna Brägger lives and works in Elkhausen-Katzwinkel (Westerwald).

Michelle Eistrup

In her works, artist Michelle Eistrup combines various mediums of expression such as photography, drawing, video, sound art, and performance. Using the categories of identity, corporeality, belief, and memory, she examines the efficacy and legacy of colonialism.  
Her works reflect multitemporal and transnational colonial entanglements. The documentary video installation In the Deep Underground and Up Above explores the history of colonialism in Australia through the personal narratives of three women. 

[Translate to English:] »kaboom« II

The texts, which occupy the house, interweave with the objects in the collection and the artists’ works. They probe them for links and (in)translatability, set focal points, consolidate and then disappear, and form voids – only to reappear again and expand the viewpoints.

Exemplary of this is the Celan-Kosmos, created in collaboration with the literary scholar Leon Doorlag. The work examines the poem SPRACHGITTER by Paul Celan, stripping away layers and levels of meaning to approach the text step by step and translate it into a spatial image.  

»kaboom« consists of literary scholar Carolin Schmidt and scenographer Margaret Schlenkrich. Both live and work in Berlin. 

Kuwash in collaboration with Beátrice Babin

“On one of our trips, we sat with an old man and drank tea with him. He told us scary and funny stories about the wild and fearless people who once lived in these mountains. That night we decided to call ourselves “Kuwash” and tell stories ourselves. Wild and fearless.” – Kuwash  

Together with video artist Beatrice Babin, Kuwash tells a story of discovering a language in Remember? Memories. The exhibition space becomes the setting for a journey of discovery, a place of encounter in images and words.   

The visitors become witnesses to a very personal story that, choreographed in the space, grows into a universal narrative. Fragments give rise to their own poetic approach to memories, which tells of overcoming speechlessness and the emergence of open spaces.

[Translate to English:] Silvina Der Meguerditchian II

A family-owned notebook containing 350 remedies, written in Armenian script and Turkish, forms the starting point of the installation Treasures:  

The artist re-correlates her great-grandmother’s recipes with various objects from the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden. By juxtaposing the objects, their stories are interwoven and transformed into a shared narrative of overcoming collective suffering.   

Silvina Der Meguerditchian lives and works in Berlin. 

Kim Seo-Kyung and Kim Un-Seong

Selected exhibits from the museum’s previous exhibitions will be on display at the Japanisches Palais. The peace statue, for example, can be seen in two versions, one made of bronze and the other of plastic. It is both a memorial and a tribute to the victims of the “comfort women” system. It was designed by the artists Kim Seo-Kyung (*1965) and Kim Un-Seong (*1964) and realized together with the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.

Ute Puder

Ute Puder is a director, communication expert, and head of the agency puder+consortio pg. In her interactive artistic works, she deals with themes of flight, topographies of commemorative landscapes, and intergenerational trauma. She is co-founder of the Leipzig-based “Revolutionale, Festival for Change.” During the 2019 Leipzig Book Fair, she initiated the installation Black Box. Where do I come from? Where am I going? based on the theme of loss of home and new beginnings at Leipzig Central Station.   

Using participatory and artistic interventions in Dresden’s urban space, Ute Puder will be inviting people to talk about personal memories and traumatic experiences. In the Semper Room of the Japanisches Palais, she has created a place of encounter and discussion. Puder creates a dialogue between the past and the present, which only takes shape through the visitors’ active participation. Her documentary film “Where do I come from. Where am I going?” will be shown as part of the exhibition. 

Ute Puder lives and works in Leipzig.

[Translate to English:] Olaf Schlote II

Haunting portraits of survivors of the Shoah show people who narrowly escaped death and found a new life in Israel. The portraits connect the past with the invitation to a more hopeful future and a new dialogical coexistence. Olaf Schlote lives and works in Bremen.