19.1.2019 – 24.3.2019
ZAK Center for Contemporary Art – Lounge
For the last twenty years, photographer Bernd Hiepe has been portraying fellows from the Swiss Canton of Zug, who are staying in Berlin for a few months. Some Swiss cities and cantons now have over 17 studio locations in the city. From 1998 to 2018 alone, more than 60 fellows from the Canton of Zug visited Berlin, who appreciated the stimulating atmosphere and the internationality of the cultural landscape. The portrait appointments are usually preceded by an intensive get-together. Together with his models, Bernd Hiepe develops a concept for the portraits and tries to work out the specific relationship between each individual person and Berlin, their own work and the culture of the city. The writer Jürgen K. Hultenreich has also provided a literary portrait of the artists. In that way, for the past twenty years, portraits of both – image and text – have been created that are as sharp as they are sensitive and they are always telling a story of urban and cultural history. Many of the places where the scholarship holders were portrayed have changed over time: bars and clubs have closed, urban wasteland has been built up, architectures of the GDR era have disappeared, and Mitte – where the artist in residence studio is located – has become a stylish hipster neighbourhood. The exhibition, Zug nach Berlin, becomes a time travel through the cultural atmosphere of the post-reunification period.
