Institut für Neue Soziale Plastik

Under authoritarian regimes, public space becomes increasingly restricted for those who voice criticism. Spaces of freedom must be created by individuals themselves and sometimes emerge in the most confined of settings: the private sphere. Entire worlds could come into being 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, distributing banned literature and art, and discussing suppressed ideas. It was here that what had no place in public emerged: free art, criticism and community. At the same time, the danger of personal betrayal was greatest there. It was often close relatives and supposed confidants who spied on and betrayed them.

For many Jews, these spaces of freedom held particular significance. In the 1970s and 1980s, the generation born after the Shoah in particular sought 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.

With the 4th edition of “Jüdische Ossis”, the exhibition curated by Christina Kettering explores these connections, taking spaces as its concrete starting point. In two walk-in spatial installations by Simon Ostaschenko and Matthias Nebel, a Moscow kitchen and a GDR living room become spaces to be explored. With accompanying 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 retreat and opposition, and also turns its gaze to the present: how are Russian dissidents dealing with Putin’s Russia following the attack on Ukraine?