2016-2017
Guebwiller – Strasbourg
e.city – Berlin :
– Philoxenia. EXHIBITION.
– Table-City – Stephen Wilks. MASTERCLASS.
– Lunch – Debate: Migration: What challenge(s) for our European cities? EVENT.
– World refugee day. EVENT.
This exhibition is part of an “e-city” series that began three years ago and aims to present an aspect of the contemporary trends in several, previously selected, European cities, as was the case with earlier shows in Rethymnon, Almaty, Prague etc.
Philoxenia means welcoming in and providing hospitality to foreigners in one’s own home or land. The artworks presented in the exhibition could consequently not be static or passive; they had to be active and participatory
The artists all adopted a participatory approach in their works. With his boat, built with the help of Syrian refugees, Daniel Seiple conceived an artwork in constant progression. Stephen Wilks built a table which re-created an urban cadastral plan on which sculptures were displayed. This work thus became the site of our lunch-debate. The tent of the KUNSTrePUBLIK collective, installed in Apollonia’s art and participatory garden, also harboured exchanges and played a key role in our aim to share. The artist Stefanie Bürkle, for her part, presented an installation on the phenomenon of remigration.
Philoxenia became, with time, an exhibition around solidarity and sharing, in which the public became invol-ved. The works created and conceived in this participatory conception of things thus fully embodied the meaning the artists sought to give them at the outset – and that thanks to the public.