Solo exhibition "...oder liebst du deine Scheuklappen?" by Cornelia Herfurtner

In keeping with the festival theme “OUT/SIDE/IN,” Cornelia Herfurtner's solo exhibition “...oder liebst du deine Scheuklappen?” (Do you love your blinders?) at the Galerie im Saalbau shows how the boundaries between private and public spaces are shifting. Herfurtner's installations show that actions attributed to private space—such as eating and sleeping—become political in public space. These practices can become instruments of self-empowerment and appropriation of space, but also targets of state repression.

The works on display also illustrate Herfurtner's intensive engagement with traditional craft techniques. Motifs in marquetry (wood inlay work) allude to small life-sustaining activities during political protests. Models—carved wooden reliefs—which have been used in the production of image-bearing pastries since the Middle Ages, evoke memories of fleeting forms of protest that developed in the context of emancipatory social struggles in Neukölln. For the exhibition, the artist has mounted the models on found ironing board stands, alluding to domestic care work in the private sphere. By using found objects from public spaces, the artist creates a contrast between private work and public consumer society and points to the overlaps between these spheres. In addition, pictorial pastries with Braille symbolize the need to design political messages in such a way that they can reach everyone and be negotiated in an inclusive discourse.

The exhibition addresses the relationship between inside and outside not as static but as fluid, interwoven dimensions. Herfurtner's works can be interpreted as “models” for circling and dissolving boundaries between the private and the public.