after the butcher, exhibition space for contemporary art and social issues, is pleased to present Lena Rosa Händle and Victoria Lomasko, two artists whose work is dedicated to societal issues such as social equality and justice from a feminist-emancipatory perspective.
In her project Linked Arms and Striding with Joyful Strength, Lena Rosa Händle shows photographic portraits of feminist groups from the 1980s in East and West Berlin. She combines these with texts by the women portrayed. Händle embarks on a search for traces with her protagonists in order to artistically capture their actions and group images in re-stagings and thus make them tangible in a new way.
Often invisible lesbian, queer and feminist stories take centre stage – as do women from older generations who have often been socially and politically active for decades and are still active in various feminist contexts today.
The exploration encompasses the question of how we relate to each other, how we establish and live relationships, both with each other and between the artist, her ‘eye’, the camera and her protagonists. Creating and depicting relationships by means of two classic photographic subjects: the group portrait and the (extended) family portrait. The feminists are not ‘only’ given a face in the process of being photographed – the portrait also creates a space in which the people portrayed speak with their voice: through their texts, which could become part of the work.
Victoria Lomasko is showing a cycle of her new reportage drawings, created in public space, of daily encounters and experiences in the ‘Western’ society and its people that is new to her.
Lomasko is a Russian artist working with social and political issues at the intersection of art, journalism, and sociology, using a synthesis of text and images. Her three graphic books Forbidden Art, Other Russias and The Last Soviet Artist, published in several languages including German, are a chronicle of two decades of Russia’s transformation from a liberal though capitalistic country into a totalitarian state. With a liner and sketchbook, she followed and recorded numerous protest demonstrations on Moscow’s streets, as well as political court cases, such as the one against members of the feminist and activist artist group Pussy Riot in Moscow in 2012.
Since 2022 Lomasko lives in exile mainly in Berlin, where she continues to research contemporary life and different local communities of our society. She uses her pencils to register, observe and report on social contradictions and injustice as a kind of seismographic recorder. With both her pen and her sketchbook she is an active member in the public sphere, e.g. at documenta fifteen and other exhibitions, rallies and demonstrations, both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, queer-feminist parades, Women’s Day on March 8, and Labour Day on May 1, among others. “I want to analyse and document the contemporary ‘western’ life and society from my post-Soviet perspective”, Lomasko said.
Note:
Discussion event Linked Arms and Striding with Joyful Strength
with Lena Rosa Händle, Roswitha Baumeister and Sarah Happersberger (moderation)
Sunday 15 June 2025 4 pm
How and under what conditions did feminist groups form in East and West Berlin in the 1980s? What images are conveyed by them – now and then? In a discussion moderated by Sarah Happersberger, the work of Lena Rosa Händle will be used to address questions of lesbian and feminist visibility, self-image, alliance politics, group images, memory culture and intergenerationality.
At the same time within Unfolding the Kitchen we open the poster project alright/wing? curated by Raimar Stange with contributions of 18 artists against right wing and nationalistic tendencies in our society.
Unfolding the Kitchen belongs to the legacy of self-organized initiatives that drive the art field forward by ransacking the possibilities of practice. In the exhibition a self-built kitchenis put as its centre. It is brought all the way from Norway. Initially developed as a scenography piece for the film Manifest by Ane Hjort Guttu,it evolved into a meeting place. First adopted by art students and members of staff at the faculty of art, music and design at Bergen University. Subsequently it became a focal point for numerous art projects and activities, a venue in its own right, of which some are presented in the exhibition.
What unfolds at After the Butcher are gestures that testify to political acuteness and intervention as artistic methods. A series of projects stem from a desire to address what we, as cultural workers, experience as a dissonance linked to the ever-increasing commercialization of creativity and artistic production. Nevertheless, the exhibition is primarily about investigating the possibility of the opposite; engaging with people and practices that testify that alternative, non-commercial approaches are not only possible but more important than ever.
This is also the starting point for Jeremiah Day’s performance On And Off The Face Of The Earth, which will wrestle with the notion of human permanency and disappearance, rights and rightlessness, and how art can possibly relate to the conditions of this moment.
The exhibition is organized and developed by Gard Frantzsen and Sveinung Rudjord Unneland.
Supported by: OCA Office of Contemporary Art Norway, Bergen Municipality, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond
THE KITCHEN SCULPTURE / MANIFESTO –
MANIFESTO (Ane Hjort Guttu, 2021)
A small art academy is fused into a huge university as one out of many departments in a prestigious newbuild. The university’s administrative procedures must be followed as part of this move. But secretly, the students and staff decide to self-organize as an independent art school. They create their own courses, programmes and leadership, beyond the knowledge of the university.
Manifesto explores how education can become cornered by a suffocating culture of surveillance and administration, and it reminds us that artistic autonomy and self organization are critical for artistic practices to thrive.
THE KITCHEN SCULPTURE (Ane Hjort Guttu and Sveinung Rudjord Unneland, 2021) was created as a prop for the film Manifesto, and operated later as a temporary and mobile gathering space at the Faculty of Art, Music and Design in Bergen, Norway. Here, it became the center of various artistic interventions by students and staff, aimed to question its immediate institutional surroundings as well as making food.
NEW PROJECTS
THE CAMPAIGN COLLECTIVE is a poster project developed from a collective wall work that explored questions related to self-organization in artist-run projects. Artists and cultural workers were asked to contribute visually in relation to self-organization, their art education, or other sources of relevant inspiration. The project takes place both at After the Butcher and in public space. Initiated and developed by Gard Frantzsen.
DINNER & A MOVIE takes form as a film screening followed by a communal meal. The event series focus on showing films which show ways of using creative processes in daily life. It is a project organized by different members of the unfinished institution, a studio collective in based in Bergen, Norway. At After the Butcher we show a short film by Thomas Kilpper, gallerist and co-founder of After the Butcher, entitled FUCK YOUR LANDLORD (2004), for the first time screening in Berlin. The event is organized by Charlotte Besujien
THE KITCHEN CONVERSATIONS – is an ongoing project organized by members of the unfinished institution. During short sessions our communal kitchen serves as a place to engage in conversations later transcribed and published by the unfinished press. For the occasion the project moves to Berlin, inviting international art field actors to discuss institutional practices and self organization.
LOST BATTLES SHOULD ALSO BE FOUGHT – The film project approaches the graffiti artist as a protaganist, emphasizing their insistence on making aesthetic expressions in public spaces. The film’s central theme is a conversation between artist Gard Frantzsen and Professor Emeritus Cecilie Høigård. The latter researched graffiti and its role as a resistance strategy for a decade. The film follows up on discussions they first initiated in the late 1980s when Frantzsen was a young graffiti artist. In parallel, we follow a city walk in Bergen, a dérive, showcasing the city as a commons. The film is developed by Gard Frantzsen and Sveinung Rudjord Unneland.
THE INVISIBLE ACADEMY brings together musicians, artists, healers, and educators for jam sessions, exploring self-organization through improvisation. The project embraces the communal, transgressive, and creative power of improvised sound, celebrating Berlin’s self-organizing spirit. Jam sessions are held around the city, with audio recordings collected in the gallery, avoiding visual documentation. Ellen Waterman describes improvisation as a negotiated moment that can create critical movements. The initiative is started by Brandon LaBelle.
MEETING ON A CARPET is a collaborative project with students from the art school in Bergen. Through co-creation, we make a carpet that serves as a meeting place and a shared platform for discussions about art and self-organization. As we talk, we sew and draw on the carpet, allowing thoughts and images to intertwine, thereby “charging” the carpet with meaning. This project involves Borghild Rudjord Unneland and students from Kunstskolen i Bergen.
THE UNFINISHED PRESS is an art book publisher that prints and publishes small pamphlets with artistic, dialogue based content in collaboration with different artists and organizations managed by artists. The unfinished press exhibits a series of recent publications relating to several of the participating projects. It was founded by Matias Grøttum, and is currently located within the unfinished institution.
‘Alright/wing?’ – At the finissage we will include the ‘Alright/wing?’ project into this exhibition. It was conceived by Raimar Stange in 2024 at the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Academia Autonomia in Athens, which was founded and organised by Joulia Strauss. Artists were asked to provide posters and flyers on the topic of right-wing populism, which were then displayed as posters and flyers in the Academia Autonomia for a summer.
A total of 50 artists took part in the project; internationally successful artists such as Dan Perjowschi, Marina Naprushkina, Oliver Ressler, Bethan Huws and Jonathan Monk as well as young colleagues who are still at the beginning of their artistic practice, such as Anahita Razmi and Ana Zibelnik/Jakob Ganslmeier.
Selected posters from the project were subsequently presented at numerous other locations in Germany and Austria, for example in public spaces on billboards in Berlin or at the Kunstverein Hannover, the Museumsquartier Wien and the Kunsthaus Dresden. There, the works were shown in the foyer, in the stairwell, on a window front and also outside, as hybrids of art and activism at the intersection between art space and public space.
In addition, some works were distributed as flyers in Athens, Bochum and Berlin. In this respect, the project is aimed at all parts of society to reflect on the danger of right-wing populism, which is rampant worldwide.
The ‘Alright/wing?’-project is hosted by Raimar Stange
Undine Goldberg, Petra Kübert & Christina Zück, Costantino Ciervo
Welcome!
Friday, 4 April, 7 pm Information and discussion event with the Bürger*innenInitiative A100 (BI A100) as part of our exhibition
We talk to activists from the BI / Citizens’ initiative A100 about the current status of the motorway construction site, 16th construction section from Neukölln to Treptow, about the planning status of the 17th construction section (Ostkreuz) and about the protest on 17 May 2025: ‘A100 wegbassen’.
after the butcher – exhibition space for contemporary art and social issues is pleased to present the exhibition Inside, Outside and Beyond, a dialogue between three artistic perspectives that artistically reflect various virulent social issues and conflicts of our time in their own unique way.
With their collaborative project A 100 – Operation Beton (2021-2025), Petra Kübert and Christina Zück explore the question of the social, urban and ecological consequences of building a new motorway in the 21st century in the middle of a metropolis like Berlin and in the midst of an energy and climate crisis. Using various means of artistic research, they approach the colliding viewpoints of a wide range of protagonists and their fears and hopes. Their photographic and video works as well as their audible interviews offer an insight into a dystopian place of transition that produces its own rules and aesthetic manifestations.
Undine Goldberg’s current painting (2025) reflects with irony and depth the relationship between individual identities and the social issues and attitudes of feminism. Her paintings are body images and images of bodies that simultaneously question their representation.
Costantino Ciervo’s Pale-Judea, (2002/2011) is a video sculpture with two constantly moving screens which, like a pair of scales, constantly balance up and down, but at the same time reproduce an argument between two brothers in a continuous loop. The controversy develops along the history and traces of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By making two constantly contradictory voices heard, the artist questions the dilemma of a seemingly irresolvable conflict with its numerous historical and political interdependencies.
The Seeker is doomed to wander, albeit not to some final destination. The Seeker’s attention is dedicated to the journey itself and navigation tactics. Along the way, the Seeker gathers information, orientates, deconstructs, and rearranges the imprints of the present, filters out the superfluous, the false, the deceptive, what is untrue or what seems even more real than reality itself. What will be gleaned from these movements and rituals? Can their knowledge be preserved for the future in more than a set of rites? And will the Seekers of the future be able to read their pasts?
Developed as an episodic installation that unfolds through three iterations, punctuated by public events, On Seeking aims to acknowledge Berlin’s critical artistic community and dialogue in a state of uncertainty marked by the disintegration of social structures, the crisis of counterculture or the erosion of solidarity. The project gathers artists in Berlin who share a background in the (post-)socialist context as well as research-based practice, reflecting on images of the future shaped by a possible dystopia. All participants have a history of running independent spaces and initiatives for art, in Budapest, Skopje and Berlin.
The project is about embracing the fluidity of artistic inquiry, emphasizing the value of process over the formality of presentation, turning the exhibition space into a site of ongoing collective experimentation, spontaneous and responsive artistic practice and dialogue. Alongside research-driven approaches, the presented works and performances attempt to reinterpret and reimagine archival material and biographies, to (re)archive the ephemeral, the discarded, the waste of history or archival waste, and to address practices of remembrance. All the while, these artistic endeavors reflect on the act of seeking itself, as a response to our time that demands new forms of knowing.
In November 2024 a temporary collective took over the running of After the Butcher with the project On Seeking. Over the course of three months, the exhibition space unfolds as an evolving, morphing installation in which individual works are replaced and repositioned, refocusing the initial constellation and keeping the dialogue fluid and ongoing.
The exhibition ‘Patterns of Seeing and Not Seeing’ presents works by Meisterschüler*innen of the expanded cinema class at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB). The exhibition includes video works, installations and drawings. In their works, the artists address questions about the production of visible and invisible patterns that define how we see. How can we create images that question these patterns? How can the act of seeing be transformed from an exploratory gaze to a gaze of resistance?
The works discuss self-images and forms of emancipation through the camera lens, a self-organised film project in Portugal or the GDR gaze in Tanzania. Another installation deals with the sound of surveillance, while another video is on contemporary interpretations of the image of Nefertiti (Nofretete). Private … utopian … politicised … embodied & redirected patterns.
Patterns of Seeing and Not Seeing presents works by Patrik Thomas, Valério de Araújo Silva, Anna Scherbyna, Anna Sopova, Michalina Musielak & Aya Ganor, Dana Kavelina. Expanded cinema class is headed by Prof. Clemens von Wedemeyer and Mareike Bernien, PhD. Link: / http://excine.net/
after-the-butcher, showroom for contemporary art and social issues, Spittastr. 25, 10317 berlin, www.after-the-butcher.de
“Apartheid was legal. The Holocaust was legal. Slavery was legal. Colonialism was legal. Legality is a question of power, not justice.”
Jose Antonio Vargas
(from Emila Roig, Why We Matter, Aufbau-Verlag 2021)
after the butcher, exhibition space for contemporary art and social issues cordially invites you to a discussion event with
Kerstin Stakemeier, Anike Joyce Sadiq, Thomas Locher and Helmut Draxler.
The discussion will take place in the context of our current exhibition by Anike Joyce Sadiq and Thomas Locher.
The works of both artists deal with elementary questions of law – Anike Joyce Sadiq in the context of German colonialism, Thomas Locher in the context of war and the question of whether soldiers may be labelled as potential murderers.
Both works are highly topical in politically polarised times. They develop a concrete concept of law as an elementary pillar of the power of the state. And they make it clear that this pillar is not static, but in constant motion and development: what is right and wrong is a question of the balance of power between us, the forces of society and the forces of the state.
