K. Yoland at Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, Germany

Hung up to dry, K. Yoland, 2023, in the exhibition <Exit is No Object>, KHSB Berlin-Karlshorst, 2023 © photo: K. Yoland

1st part: 15 October – 24 October 2022 (10 days)
2nd part: 2 May – 22 May 2024 (21 days)

I used the secondment to explore territorial zoning and control in the former Russian occupied East Berlin. The residency allowed me to research my interests in “spatial control” in a new context — out of the desert and in an urban and historical context. I explored the architecture/infrastructure of prisons and urban-scale militarised containment and surveillance of populations. Additionally, I developed a site-specific installation examining the history and spaces of imprisonment. At the end of the residency Kunstverein invited me to present a performative reading of my previous Desert observations — an exploration of militarised power and control across invisible lines in the sand. I am grateful to Dr Jaspar Joseph-Lester for nominating me as a researcher and for Susanne Prinz and Dr. Chiara Valci Mazzara for inviting me to perform a reading (Desert Diaries) at their gallery and for introducing my work to the curator, Elana Katz (of House of the End of the World) who curated me in EXIT IS NO OBJECT

“Hung up to dry”, March, 2023

Site-specific installation in a former KGB prison in Berlin-Karlshorst, March, 2023. All those brought to the prison in East Berlin were then transported to work camps in Russia or Crimea. The title and inspiration for the work orginates from the phrase ‘hung up to dry’. While wet clothes can be hung up to dry, when the term is applied to a person, it means they were punished or made to suffer unjustly, without recourse to support or defence. In the room, the hanging materials speak to the people and bodies whose futures were forcefully removed. The installation was only accesible for an audience via a security camera. Fans were used off-camera to move the hanging material, evoking tension, wind, invisible forces or the ghost traces of unresolved tragedies.

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