In Berlin, the season opens right on time for Berlin Art Week with the exhibition What does it mean for a place to be loved? Anita Muçolli, Sevil Tunaboylu, and Ian Waelder explore the experiences of second- and third-generation migrants. Among other things, they address the contradictions of belonging to a place and question the meaning of home. The opening is on September 10 during Berlin Art Week. From October 4 to 14, the ifa Gallery in Stuttgart will show works by Otto Dix. In the exhibition Was in Wirklichkeit ist (What is Reality), his cycle of works Der Krieg (The War) enters into a special dialogue with contemporary works from the ifa’s art collection. The works open up new levels of meaning and broaden the view to include contemporary perspectives. In addition, the second part of Ken Aïcha Sy’s highly complex and personal exhibition Survival Kit will be presented in Stuttgart starting on October 31. Based on her family archive, it highlights important key moments in contemporary Senegalese painting between 1960 and 1990. The first part of the exhibition can be seen at the ifa Gallery in Berlin until August 31.
Image above: Ausstellungsansicht Connecting Roots: Collective Stories, Individual Identities, ifa-Galerie Stuttgart, 2025 © ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Foto: Anton Avdieiev.
Anita Muçolli, Sevil Tunaboylu and Ian Waelder: Was bedeutet es für einen Ort, geliebt zu werden?
Opening: Wednesday, September 10, 6–10 pm
Exhibition dates: Thursday, September 11, 2025, to Sunday, January 11, 2026
Guided tour with artists and curator: September 11, 2025, 6 pm
Curated by Hana Halilaj
ifa-Galerie Berlin
In an age of fractured geographies and contested histories, what does it mean to love one’s homeland? Is home a place of longing or a burden of history? In this exhibition, Anita Muçolli, Sevil Tunaboylu, and Ian Waelder explore the contradictions of belonging, where love is interwoven with alienation and connection clashes with criticism. By addressing exile, resistance, and fluid identities, the artists question the meaning of home—not as a fixed place, but as a shifting terrain of politics and emotions.
The works in the exhibition What Does It Mean for a Place to Be Loved? reflect on the effects of migration on personal and collective identity, the tensions between embodying cultural heritage and assimilation, and the emotional traces of displacement. Through chance encounters and constant exchange, the participating artists unfold narratives that are specific to the experiences of second- and third-generation migrants who have inherited both the trauma and nostalgia of their families’ homelands.
Yvon Chabrowski, Sven Johne, Lisa Kohl, Georg Lutz, Raphael Sbrzesny and Maya Schweizer in dialogue with Otto Dix: Was in Wirklichkeit ist
Opening: October 4, 2025, 12 noon–7 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, October 4, to Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Special opening hours daily from 10 am to 7 pm
Curated by Susanne Weiß and Bettina Korintenberg
ifa-Galerie Stuttgart
Hardly anyone else captured the horrors of World War I as relentlessly and shockingly in images as Otto Dix. Images that, in their urgency, draw us in and resonate with us even today. Since 1993, his cycle of works entitled Der Krieg (The War) has been traveling around the world in a touring exhibition organized by the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations). The ifa Gallery in Stuttgart is now bringing it into dialogue with contemporary positions from the ifa art collection: Six artists who work with video and performance have selected etchings from the cycle for the exhibition Was in Wirklichkeit ist (What is Reality) and juxtaposed them with their own works. The War is both a testimony and a memorial, arising directly from Dix’s experiences as a soldier. The invited artists open up new dimensions of his work and establish connections to themes such as trauma, collective memory, violence, repression, the body, landscape, ideology, and absurdity. The exhibition is part of the ifa program series Out of the Box.
In cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the Wüstenrot Foundation.
Tandem tour: Dix at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the ifa Gallery Stuttgart.
Ulrike Groos will guide visitors through the Dix room of the Doppelkäseplatte exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The tour will then continue at the ifa Gallery Stuttgart. Limited number of participants.
Ken Aïcha Sy: Survival Kit
Monochrome of Negritude or the Introduction to the Modernists
Opening: October 31, 2025, 7–9 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, November 1, 2025, to Sunday, February 22, 2026
ifa-Galerie Stuttgart
ifa-Galerie Berlin: until Sunday, 31. August 2025
The exhibition Survival Kit – Between Us and History: The Hidden Archive at the ifa Gallery Berlin presents for the first time in Germany the key findings of the five-year research project Survival Kit by curator and cultural activist Ken Aïcha Sy on the key moments in contemporary Senegalese painting between 1960 and 1990. The exhibition will be shown in both ifa galleries – first in Berlin, then in Stuttgart. In two locations and with different scenographies, it explores a common focus: the intimate connection between a family archive and the collective dimension of a shared heritage – the history of contemporary Senegalese painting from 1960 to 1990. With a selection of works from German museum collections, the exhibition aims to bring these artists out of storage and make them accessible to the public in order to shed new light on their artistic legacy.
Connecting Roots: Collective Stories, Individual Identities
20 years of the CrossCulture program, until September 21, 2025
Supporting program for the closing weekend: Friday, September 19 to Sunday, September 21, 2025
ifa-Galerie Stuttgart
The CrossCulture program of the ifa – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations is celebrating its 20th anniversary – two decades of exchange between scholarship holders, the ifa, and host institutions. The ifa is marking this milestone with an exhibition conceived by curators Elham Khattab and Omar Chennafi for the ifa Gallery in Stuttgart. They developed the exhibition Connecting Roots: Collective Stories, Individual Identities with an extensive supporting program and contributions by contemporary artists on the themes of memory and identity, collective memory and healing, and the future of remembrance.
From September 19 to 21, the closing festival will take place with artists and curators, featuring a diverse program of workshops, the documentary theater NULO, and communal cooking in the “Roots Kitchen.”
WHEN?
Anita Muçolli, Sevil Tunaboylu und Ian Waelder: Was bedeutet es für einen Ort, geliebt zu werden?
Opening: Wednesday, September 10, 6–10 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Thursday, September 11, 2025, to Sunday, January 11, 2026
Yvon Chabrowski, Sven Johne, Lisa Kohl, Georg Lutz, Raphael Sbrzesny und Maya Schweizer im Dialog mit Otto Dix: Was in Wirklichkeit ist
Opening: October 4, 2025, 12-7 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, October 4 to Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Ken Aïcha Sy: Survival Kit
Opening: October 31, 2025, 7–9 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, November 1, 2025, to Sunday, February 22, 2026
Opening hours ifa-Galerie Berlin:
Tuesday–Sunday: 2–6 pm
Thursdays: 2 pm to 8 pm
Closed on Mondays and public holidays
Opening hours ifa-Galerie Stuttgart:
Wednesday to Sunday:noon to 6 pm
Closed on Mondays and public holidays
WHERE?
ifa-Galerie Berlin:
Linienstraße 139/140
D-10115 Berlin
ifa-Galerie Stuttgart:
Charlottenplatz 17
D-70173 Stuttgart
COSTS?
Free entry
