• About the Project
• Tour Schedule and Location
• Costs and Tickets
• Hinda Weiss, Avi Feldman – Biographies
• Additional Funding
• Image Gallery

2025, mixed media

Part of the festival programme 10 YEARS – 10 DAYS! to mark the 10th anniversary of Kunsthaus Dahlem

About the Project

Erysimum (Wallflower) is a video and photography installation exploring how architecture, sculpture and the human figure – live and as portrayed in art – reflect on each other, construct and deconstruct a space through time. Within the specific history and context of the building of Kunsthaus Dahlem, Erysimum (Wallflower) is a reflection on how a building, constructed for an artist working in service of Nazi propaganda, changes its purpose and significance through time. Architecture, as described by Jennifer O’Donnell, is never neutral. It establishes “order in the lives of humans and can be made complicit in the perversion of that order”*. Like the Erysimum plant, able to grow and revel by sinking roots between brick and stones, the performative actions of our bodies are envisioned as an activist action creating cracks of new meanings in space.

The human figure and its range of gestures are a recurring theme within the space of Kunsthaus Dahlem – heroic to tragic, masculine to feminine, singular to part of a crowd. Drawing inspiration from these sculptural forms, their expressive postures, and their relation to the history of architecture, Weiss and Feldman investigate and engage in three forms of performative action. In and around the museum, Weiss’ body shifts between spectator and sculpture – contemplating the right to mobility, the presence of the feminine within masculinized spaces, and the illusionary quality of Trompe-l’œil. In video works disguised as a museum poster, they evoke reflections on the lives of former Dahlem residents. And in photographic works, in which Weiss’ rehearses sculptural gestures in front of classically inspired federal and academic buildings in New York City. These images are allowing a juxtaposition between a dark past and a horrifying present in which a reactionary US administration calls for a return to the past through Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, and attacking scientific, academic and artistic freedoms.

Erysimum (Wallflower) will be accompanied by three tours given in German, English and Hebrew led by Hinda Weiss and Avi Feldman. The tours will be based on and related to the works of artists we are referring to in the installation.

* Jennifer OʼDonnell: The Matter of Memory: Thoughts on the Value of Architecture in Support of Collective Memory.

Tour Schedule and Location

Tour in German:
Thursday, 12 June, 15:00 – 16:00

Tour in English:
Friday, 13 June, 15:00 – 16:00

Tour in Hebrew:
Saturday, 14 June, 15:00 – 16:00

Costs and Tickets

All anniversary events are free of charge for all visitors.

No ticket purchase required.

Hinda Weiss, Avi Feldman – Biographies

Hinda Weiss is an artist based in Brooklyn, working with moving images, sound, and installation. Her works merge local histories with contemporary human existence, creating fantastic yet familiar environments. Despite using complex editing techniques, Weiss collects her materials in a simple way: alone with a small camera. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from the Midrasha School of Art. Her works are part of renowned collections such as the Israel Museum and the Shpilman Institute for Photography. Her works have been exhibited at venues such as the Israel Museum, Palais de Tokyo, and Ludlow 38 in New York.

hindaweiss.com

Avi Feldman is a curator and founder of the gallery Wannsee Contemporary in Berlin-Wannsee (2021). In 2018, he was Curator in Residence at Ludlow 38 in New York, a programme of the Goethe-Institut. Feldman is also the founder of The Agency for Legal Imagination, an independent organization dedicated to exploring the connections between legal and artistic imagination, as well as visual and legal activism. He holds a degree in law and has been a member of the Israeli Bar Association since 2005. Feldman holds a PhD in curatorial practice and has been teaching since 2024 at Bard College Berlin and the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle.

wannsee-contemporary.com

ADDITIONAL* FUNDING

Artis: for Hinda Weiss

* The festival programme 10 YEARS – 10 DAYS! is supported by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF).

IMAGE GALLERY

Video stills: