Dieter Ruckhaberle Award and exhibition

How do we turn Salt into Sugar? An exhibition with Anna Scherbyna, Uliana Bychenkova and guests: Kateryna Aliinyk, Kateryna Berlova, Nastia Hrychkovska, Olexandr Ieltsyn, Valentina Petrova, Maya Schweizer.

The recipients of the Dieter Ruckhaberle Award 2022/23 have been the Ukrainian artists and curators Anna Scherbyna and Uliana Bychenkova. For How do we turn Salt into Sugar? they have invited fellow artists to react to Museum Reinickendorf’s permanent exhibition with site-specific interventions and commissioned artworks.

“The corpus of the project is assembled from the different stages of trauma unfolding between loop and transformation. The constant ritournelle of repetitive inner reflections gives birth to quirky and marvelous forms of adaptation. Though we emphasize the importance of a collective practice of seeping communication, even if not in literal language but through helpless attempts of transcribing bitterness. The project’s title articulates the utopian nature of translation itself, but at the same time we believe that only collective empathy can convert salt into sugar, in the guise of alchemy, therapy, art, or a miracle. We recognize ourselves as ‘privileged refugees,’ but realize that this is not enough; we dream of sharing, growing and cultivating together our defiant hopes for a new solidarity with the Other Other Other.”—Anna Scherbyna and Uliana Bychenkova

On April 28, a Ball Night of Exile at Ballhaus Wedding proposes to think of a more radical and performative idea of Willkommenskultur. With contributions by Kateryna Aliinyk, Kateryna Berlova, Uliana Bychenkova, Giorgio D’Ausilio, Taras Gembik, Nastia Hrychkovska, Olexandr Ieltsyn, Henriëtta Jonkblutt, Ray Kaczynski, Iryna Kudria and Anna Scherbyna. 

A project by Künstlerhof Frohnau, in cooperation with the department of Art & History of the Berlin-Reinickendorf municipality. Supported by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe and FABiK.

Nafis Fathollahzadeh: Dieter Ruckhaberle Award 2023/24
At the same time Künstlerhof Frohnau is delighted to announce that Nafis Fathollahzadeh is the recipient of the Dieter Ruckhaberle Award 2023/24.

Jury statement: “We are pleased to offer time and space for the photographer and filmmaker’s collaboration with anthropologist Şermin Güven to further develop their joint film project Khabur. Fathollahzadeh and Güven engage photography, archaeology and mapping as disciplines that have emerged from the colonial-imperial enterprise. Through this project, they reflect on the imperial grammar of photographic archives and explore how these can be recycled, unlearned, and reimagined. We are looking forward to the expanded presentation of Fathollahzadeh’s cinematic approach in the context of their first solo exhibition in Berlin, in 2024.”

Nafis Fathollahzadeh is a Berlin-based artist and researcher from Iran. They work at the intersection of artistic research, video art and photography and are the art director and co-editor of Momentography of a Failure, a multidisciplinary platform for collaborative thinking, collaborations, mapping and publishing. Fathollahzadeh was a fellow in the Rosa Luxemburg scholarly program on Authoritarianism and Counter strategies and affiliated with EUME: Forum Transregionale Studien. They were awarded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fotografie prize for their project Momentography of a Failure and received the DAAD International Scholarship for Artists.

The Dieter Ruckhaberle Award is dedicated to artists who in their work find innovative forms for addressing political subject matter. It has been initiated in 2019 by Künstlerhof Frohnau’s director Kaya Behkalam, in cooperation with the department of Art & History of the Berlin-Reinickendorf municipality.  This year’s jury members have been Pauline Doutreluingne, curator, film maker, artistic director of Kunstverein Arnsberg; Rike Frank, co-director European Kunsthalle and executive director Berlin Artistic Research Grant Program, Boaz Levin, author,  curator, co-editor of Cabinet Magazine’s Kiosk; Setareh Shahbazi, Artist, KHF Berlin, Dr. Sabine Ziegenrücker, Director of Museum Reinickendorf. Nominators were: Andrea Thal, Annette Maechtel, Nina Tabassomi, Sarah Rifky, Frauke Boggasch, Angelika Stepken, Elke aus dem Moore, Yorgos Sapountzis, Azin Feizabadi, Assaf Gruber, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhisvili, Ulf Aminde, Surya Gied, Annette Frick.

Künstlerhof Frohnau celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. On this occasion it will host Langzeitbelichtung, a large-scale exhibition at Rathaus Gallery Reinickendorf from May 26–August 18, and a festival for contemporary music and performance: Walden: Memory Beach on July 1st. 

Press contact: Denhart v. Harling, dh [​at​] segeband.de.