OFFENE ENDIGUNGEN – Work presentation by Emma Zimmermann, the recipient of the 28th Bernhard Heiliger Scholarship

Design: Ira Göller.

• About the exhibition
• Location
• Scholarship recipient

Opening: 5 June 2026, 6pm
Opening remarks by Dr Friedrich Meschede, Executive Board Member of the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation
Welcome address by Prof Marion Hirte, First Vice-President of UdK Berlin

About the exhibition

In honour of the sculptor Bernhard Heiliger, the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation awards an annual scholarship to sculptors from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) and Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, where Heiliger taught. This goes in combination with a public presentation of the Scholarship recipients’ works in Heiliger’s former studio in the East Wing of Kunsthaus Dahlem.

This year, Emma Zimmermann, who studied at UdK Berlin with Prof. Christine Streuli, was selected as the recipient of the scholarship.

This yearʼs scholarship was awarded in cooperation with the Berlin University of the Arts Foundation.

Location

East Wing

Scholarship recipient

Emma Zimmermann (* 1997) studied Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) with Prof. Christine Streuli and completed their studies in 2025 as a Meisterschüler:in. Zimmermann has received, among others, the Ursula Hanke-Förster Foundation Prize for Sculpture (2025) and the Bernhard Heiliger Scholarship (2026). Their work has recently been shown at Künstlerhaus Dortmund, at the Berlin Position Art Fair and at Stiftung Wolfram Beck, Berlin.

Emma Zimmermann’s practice engages the symbolism of fences and spikes. They mark ownership, exclude or enclose, and shape space. Their works inhabit this ambivalence, inviting viewers into a physical relationship: to enter, hesitate, or remain at the threshold. Fences and borders define our present; questioning them is a shared task. Central is not only the viewers’ experience. In the lengthy, physically demanding process of making, Zimmermann inscribes themself into the work. By adopting materials and techniques historically coded as masculine, their fluid body becomes tangible – something to grasp.

Instagram: zimmer.minus.mann