Special exhibition "Heinz and Rode" (2015)

A discourse between past and present - art as a mediator between generations
Alwina Heinz and Nikolaus Rode

This exhibition is devoted to the Memorial Day of Russian-Germans of August 28th, 1941. On this day, the deportation of thousands of people from the Volga in the Black Sea region in Caucasus to other regions in Russia and Asia began. The trauma of those who experienced World War II is still present and painful to this day. In this exhibition, the 74-year-old artist and contemporary witness Nikolas Rode meets the 29-year-old artist Alwina Heinz from a younger generation of Russian-Germans. Nikolaus Rode confronts the visitor directly with a personal and collective pain from a time of expulsion in the Soviet Union. Alwina Heinz's paintings ask questions about identity - that of her ancestors as well as her own. Here the paintings of both artists open up a conversation about pain, acceptance, integration, new beginnings, hope and future in a country that is supposed to be home but is instead foreign. 

Insights into the exhibition