FERNBEZIEHUNGEN / Long-Distance Relationships

Long-distance relationships carry both a magic and a challenge: an erotic tension born of the unfinished and the unprotected, and the constant task of sustaining emotion across great distances.

So close, yet so foreign: the exhibition and its accompanying program trace the arc of the long-distance relationship — from foreignness in a country that is not one's own, to an actual estrangement from one's own body; from the normative to the non-normative.
The Fernbeziehungen project, a collaboration between KVOST and Galeria Lectwo in Poznań, takes up the subject of migration, and labor migration in particular, which consistently flows from less privileged countries and regions toward more industrialized, wealthier ones. Its direction is therefore specific: from East to West, and from South to North.

Across Germany, and in Berlin specifically, the largest migrant groups come from Turkey and Poland. How does the situation of the so-called Gastarbeiter — the guest workers of the mid-twentieth century — affect the self-worth and life chances of their descendants? How does the migration tied to the post-1989 transformation, and later to EU eastward enlargement, shape the status of those who migrated?

With artists Lesia Pcholka and Uladzimir Hramovich, Zofia nierodzińska, Alicja Rogalska, and Aykan Safoğlu, the exhibition explores how the experience of migration shapes one's own identity and one's relationships with others — among them those who left their country of birth, those who chose to stay, and those who were left behind. Focusing on human relationships and connections, the exhibition does not aim to compare the often very different, personal migration stories that inspired the artists' work. Rather, it sets out to relate the many ways migration experiences structure not only the material but also the emotional aspects of life.

In her paintings, Zofia nierodzińska draws on the story of her father, who emigrated from Poland to the United States. By analyzing migration through family memory and social structures, she presents emigration as a translocal network. She researches the art of post-socialist countries and views her position as a second-generation migrant in the (former) West as essential to understanding and critically analyzing contemporary societies.