Exhibition Opening

DARJA LINDER
OH BABY, BABY, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW

Exhibition Opening: Wednesday, January 15, 2025, at 6:30 p.m.
Exhibition Duration: January 15, 2025 – March 1, 2025, Tue–Sat, 2–6 p.m.

On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, at 6.30 p.m., the Saarländische Galerie and the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation cordially invite you to the opening of Darja Linder's solo exhibition OH BABY, BABY, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW.

Darja Linder’s figurative paintings and installations are peppered with visual codes that refer to her generation’s experience of dating apps, television series and internet phenomena. The colourful and garish aesthetic of her work plays with the late capitalist desire for saturation and abundance. However, it appears to be a colorful, shimmering surface that often conceals painful issues.

Questions of class, gender and migration are raised.
Linder observes the connections between political (power) structures and individual desires. Her work explores how deeply individual and collective experiences reach into our identities.

Influenced by her own experiences between decaying socialism in the East and capitalist structures in the West, she addresses socially critical issues, always woven into a web of (pop) cultural and traditional symbols.

In her current series of works, she raises the question of transgenerational inheritance: What do our mothers give us and what do we pass on? What role do the traumas of our ancestors play in our own lives? And how do we deal with them?

The works were created during a two-month residency at Schloss Wiepersdorf and also revolve around Linder’s personal experiences as a pregnant woman. They represent the beginning of an exploration of the transition from daughter to mother, underlined by the recurring symbol of the matryoshka doll. The artist herself becomes a doll within a doll within a doll. She seeks a way to explore the gaps in her own biography and to locate herself in her new role.

„I tell my story with words that are not mine,
I lost my mothers’ tongue.
My body carries fear and anger and a daughter.
I had to find my mothers’ past
To feel their grief – they could not speak.”

With: Darja Linder
Introduction: Lorena Simmel, Author, Berlin

Admission free
Saarländische Galerie – Europäisches Kunstforum e.V., Charlottenstraße 3, 10969 Berlin

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