CONTACT ZONES – Murat Adash, Céline Berger, Syowia Kyambi
Opening of "Contact Zones — Murat Adash, Céline Berger, Syowia Kyambi" at the Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt on October, 7, 2022. (Picture: Felix Bernoully / MPI for Empirical Aesthetics)
The curtain is up on CONTACT ZONES – Murat Adash, Céline Berger, Syowia Kyambi: Friday, October 7, saw the opening of this first collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) and the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, which originated in the MPIEA's artist-in-residence program, INHABIT.
Open to guest artists from various disciplines, who pursue their work in dialogue with scientists from the Institute, INHABIT features a residency format that is thematically and conceptually free-form. Each iteration is characterized by the artists themselves through their encounters, dialogues, and collaborations. This exhibition, which features artists Murat Adash, Céline Berger, and Syowia Kyambi, presents the works they created during their 2021–2022 residencies in the research environment of the MPIEA.
INHABIT curator Eike Walkenhorst explains: “Each of the works has a different focus, reflecting the artists’ respective approaches to the scientific environment—which are alluded to in the title of the exhibition. CONTACT ZONES refers to their encounters with a very different culture of knowledge and points to the challenge of creating dialogue and articulating a shared language. While in cultural studies a contact zone refers to a social space in which multiple cultures meet, here at the MPIEA it indicates the interface of science and art.”
The works exhibited engage and embody such contact zones in various ways. While Murat Adash’s performative practice negotiates the location of bodies in space. Céline Berger’s experimental film work explores the aesthetics of measurement and quantification at the threshold of bodies and instruments; and in her multimedia installation, Syowia Kyambi cultivates rhizomatic thinking, inspired by our ecosystem and the morphology of mangroves.
The exhibition CONTACT ZONES – Murat Adash, Céline Berger, Syowia Kyambi runs until January 15, 2023, at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main.