Opening and guided tour of the exhibition ‘Jüdische Ossis IV’

Under authoritarian regimes, public space becomes increasingly restricted for critical thinkers. Spaces of freedom must be created on one’s own and sometimes emerge in the most confined of places: in private life. Entire worlds could emerge in the small Moscow kitchens of the 1970s or in a living room in the GDR. Artists and dissidents crowded around kitchen tables and on sofas, circulating banned literature and art, and discussing suppressed ideas. This is where what had no place in public life took root: free art, criticism, and community. At the same time, the danger of personal betrayal was greatest there. Often, it was close relatives and supposed confidants who spied on and betrayed them.

For many jewish people, these spaces of freedom held special significance. Above all, the generation born after the Shoah sought, in the 1970s and 1980s, both a critical engagement with the communist states and a new Jewish identity situated between religion, secularism, and reformed communism. A fruitful exchange developed between Moscow and East Berlin. 

In authoritarian regimes, public space becomes increasingly restricted for critical thinkers. Spaces of freedom must be created independently and sometimes emerge in the most confined of settings: the private sphere. In the small Moscow kitchens of the 1970s or a GDR living room—with the fourth edition of “Jüdische Ossis,” the exhibition curated by Christina Kettering explores these connections and takes specific spaces as its starting point. In two walk-through installations by Simon Ostaschenko and Matthias Nebel, a Moscow kitchen and a GDR living room become spaces that visitors can explore. Accompanied by audio performances, visitors can immerse themselves individually in these living environments.

The exhibition explores the possibilities and limits of spaces of freedom under authoritarian regimes, the relationship between withdrawal and opposition, and also turns its gaze to the present: How are Russian dissidents dealing with Putin’s Russia in the wake of the attack on Ukraine?