For the fourth edition of the Berliner Herbstsalon, the Maxim Gorki Theater hosted a three-week program with more than 40 artists at Maxim Gorki Theatre, Palais am Festungsgraben, Zeughauskino at the German Historical Museum, East Side Gallery, Haus der Statistik and SCOTTY.
Under the title DE-HEIMATIZE IT!, the exhibition, organized by Shermin Langhoff with Aljoscha Begrich and Cagla Ilk (collaboration: Elena Sinanina) gathered artistic positions which discussed constructions of identity, nation and belonging from an intersectional feminist perspective.
Numerous visitors came to see various video works, installations, sculptures, and much more. The works dealt with a critical questioning of the toxic masculine view of the body, the history of the suppression of non-white knowledge and forms of narration, as well as structurally racist and sexual violence, the transmission of myths and the question of historiography, suppressed and repressed histories in art and politics.
Therefore, the 4. Berliner Herbstsalon has taken the burning debates about the term »Heimat« nourished by current right-wing and conservative forces as an opportunity to reveal the colonial, fascist and patriarchal potential of the term. For the triumph of male authoritarianism, nationalism and neoliberal regimes is always accompanied by exclusion and exploitation.
The Herbstsalon has invited artists to deconstruct and dispel, bend and deform the myths of patriarchy from different perspectives, backgrounds and motifs. The exhibition was based on intersectional perspectives, i.e. artistic positions dealing with the various mechanisms of exclusion and inequality with regard to race, class and gender and their intersections. The exhibition in its entirety understands itself as a project of solidarity, as a major crossroad at which the themes and conflicts could be viewed and understood in a converging way.