At the heart of the exhibition project Wir Deutschen are Black German perspectives and the question of how identity is shaped within the tension between private everyday life, the family environment, and societal images.
The photographic, installation and film works by Amon Aleme Selassie, Lily Roggemann and Michael Roggemann are based on their respective individual biographies and address experiences of belonging, representation and self-perception from perspectives that are both highly personal and socially anchored.
Image above: Wir Deutschen, roam projects e. V.
In a scenographic installation, Aleme Selassie creates a space of memory from his childhood, offering glimpses into a world that at first seems defined by domestic comfort and the joys of growing up: a tube television, comics, and the promise of Game Boy happiness. These objects mark a crystallizing moment – familiar at first glance, yet in their personal significance extending far beyond everyday items. They speak of an apparently ordinary life within a society in which belonging is repeatedly called into question. Everyday experiences, such as the recurring demand to explain one’s “real” origin, reveal how normality and exclusion intertwine and can shape the feeling of not fully belonging, despite social participation. In an analog photo series, Aleme Selassie returns to these motifs. In staged, cinematic and nostalgic images, he reenacts everyday situations of Black teenagers with adult models, casting a retrospective look at his own childhood while simultaneously questioning stereotypical media imagery.
The starting point for Lily Roggemann’s film Ich wusste gar nicht, dass ich eine andere Hautfarbe hatte. Eine Kindheit in der DDR is the biography of her mother, Cornelia Roggemann-Heuer, who was born in the GDR in 1958 as the daughter of a white German woman and a Nigerian student. In a calm, intimate interview, Roggemann-Heuer speaks about her childhood and her perspective on being perceived as different, about family support, and about social reactions. The work interweaves personal memories with historical, sociological, and political contexts surrounding racism, discrimination, and the GDR’s official self-image as an antifascist state.
Photographs by Michael Roggemann from the private family archive complement the film. They accompany Cornelia Roggemann-Heuer through different phases of her life and show her both as a young woman looking confidently into the camera – with Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s wrapped Reichstag in the background – and together with her twins and Wendekinder, Lily and Sascha Roggemann. The images point to a biography that, like Aleme Selassie’s, is shaped by questions of origin and so-called “roots.” For a long time, Lily Roggemann’s response was: “I’m a Berliner.” A sense of self formed through lived everyday life, the city as a center of living, and the family environment.
The works of Amon Aleme Selassie, Lily Roggemann, and Michael Roggemann move between private memory and the public sphere. Personal experiences, family ties, and processes of self-positioning are not presented as purely individual stories, but are made visible as part of social realities. The biographical look back becomes the basis for a contemporary perspective that negotiates identity formation, self-empowerment, and the question of how we want to define belonging today.
On 21 February, a conversation with Amon Aleme Selassie, Cornelia Roggemann-Heuer and Patrice Poutrus (head of the ‘Work Against Racism’ department at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation) will take place.
The exhibition runs during Black History Month and is funded by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the Projektfonds Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
Curatorial & Project Management: Marie Mergler, Helene Bosecker
Public Relations: Kristen Rästas
Assistant: Maria Kallau
WHEN?
Opening: Saturday, 7. February 2026, 6-9 pm
Dates: Saturday, 7. until Saturday, 21. February 2026
Opening hours: Thu–Sat, 4–7 pm
Safe Space Storytelling with Amon Aleme Selassie, Cornelia Roggemann-Heuer and Patrice Poutrus (head of the ‘Work Against Racism’ department at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation): Saturday, 21 February, 5 pm
Finissage: Saturday, 21. February 2026, 4-8 pm
WHERE?
roam projects e. V.
Lindenstr. 91
10969 Berlin
