Versiegelte Zeit / Sealed Time
The stories of cities like London, Tunis, Dallas, Berlin and now Bonn are the starting point for the development of Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s artworks. Part of the developing progress of her work is the search for a city’s traces which the artist regards not only as signs of everyday life, but mostly as concrete pictures of political-geographic conditions and their impact on us humans. Kaabi-Linke examines these traces and pictures closely, interprets them and eventually transforms them into art.
The work Altarpiece (2015), for example, carries the traces and marks of a wall of a World War II bunker situated in the center of Berlin. The bunker used to give shelter to civilians during the airstrikes of the Second World War, later it served the Red Army to hold captive prisoners of war, was then used as a warehouse for storing vegetables during the GDR years, was turned into a legendary techno club after the reunification and today houses the comprehensive Boros collection of temporary art. Golden double wing doors “seal” the artwork and keep it safe from being transformed any further. Thus, Altarpiece makes history visible while at the same time it presents a preserved moment in time.
The work Parkverbot (Park Ban, 2010), which consists of a park bench with spikes on its seating surface and backrest, deals with requirements and prohibitions in public space and makes us able to experience both almost physically. “Sealed Time” will also include works which the artist has specifically created for the exhibition and which refer to the history of the city of Bonn. Here, the artist has for example used the dust from former agency offices of the “Bonn Republic.”
The way that Nadia Kaabi-Linke thinks and works is constantly being influenced by her perspective as a cosmopolitan. Born in Tunis in 1978, the Russian-Tunisian artist grew up in Tunis, Kiev and Dubai, received a doctor’s degree in art history at the Sorbonne in Paris and has been living in Berlin for several years. Her works were part of several group exhibitions, e.g. at the Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea, or the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India. After solo exhibitions in Lisbon, London and Dallas, Texas, “Sealed Time“ is Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s first exhibition at a museum in Germany.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue which will be published in January 2018 and which will contain essays by Stephan Berg, Sara Raza, Barbara J. Scheuermann, Michel Sicard, as well as Nadia and Timo Kaabi-Linke.
