Manaf Halbouni: ZONE

In conjunction with the theme year “Everything in Motion” of the Association of Bergisch Museums.

Beginning in November 2021, the Center for Persecuted Arts will present Manaf Halbouni’s installation ZONE, which will encompass the entire museum building—a critical reflection on our present that takes up historical motifs of the permanent exhibition, while at the same time representing an acute and real restriction for the visitors. With ZONE, Halbouni, whose most recent participation in Bon Voyage: Travelling in Contemporary Art at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen anticipated to a certain extent the theme year Everything in Motion, also addresses questions regarding freedom (of movement) and its real and disembodied limits. ZONE is presented in cooperation with the Kulturparlament and the Morgner Haus, Soest.

At the center of ZONE, oil barrels divide the museum insurmountably into two parts; viewers are forced to visit both parts of the exhibition via different access points. The background to this installation is the so-called Green Line, which has divided Cyprus since 1974 within the framework of a ceasefire agreement: a demarcation line under the administration of UN peacekeeping troops. In large parts of the island, it is up to seven kilometers wide; but at its narrowest point—in the middle of the capital Nicosia—it is only six meters wide. There, Ledra Street has become a symbol of this state of division: Here, in the middle of Nicosia’s old town, oil drums and sandbags mark restricted zones and borders—dividing the street, the city, and society.

During the exhibitions, interventions in the urban space will also stimulate the dialog with the citizens and visitors to the City of Solingen. Barrels will also be installed and projections have shown throughout the city—and possibly in neighboring cities. 

Halbouni: “Our society is currently experiencing a state of division as the result of an imaginary, invisible wall, and this in every sector and every social class. We lack debates that we can have with each other, we lack dialog, and we lack the need to find each other again to solve problems together.

A cooperation project with the Kulturparlament and the Morgner Haus, Soest.

With ZONE, Halbouni addresses questions regarding freedom (of movement) and its real and disembodied limits. At the center of ZONE, oil barrels divide the museum insurmountably into two parts; viewers are forced to visit both parts of the exhibition via different access points. The background to this installation is the so-called Green Line, which has divided Cyprus since 1974 within the framework of a ceasefire agreement: a demarcation line under the administration of UN peacekeeping troops.

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The Center for Persecuted Arts is a museum of discovery dedicated exclusively to artists whose opportunities for development and works were blocked, prevented, or annihilated by the dictatorships of the last century and totalitarian regimes up to the present day. It is a cross-genre museum, and its collection of Art and Literature tells of lost, forgotten, and barely considered works of art, stories, and fates.

Supported by Zilberman and the Kulturfonds NRW.