Wohnzimmer - Ausstellung, Installation, Workshop

In the organizer's words:

Welcome to the living room. A meeting place for generations. This room invites you to read, relax, weave, knit, watch and listen. As part of the Beziehungsweise Familie program, it offers the opportunity to calm down, become curious and actively explore.

The living room opens up access to diverse forms of family. It poses questions about how family backgrounds shape life paths and how one's own life story is shaped or "interwoven".

Collective wall collage and weaving and knitting workshop series

A participatory mural collage and workshop series explores the matriarchal lineages of the Wayuu community through textile art and storytelling. Following the thread of Waleker's story, visitors are invited to weave along. Visit the Gift of the Spider workshop series! The project explores the rich cosmology and female lineage of the Wayuu community in northern Colombia and Venezuela. The Aliwaa collective - Sindri Gonzales Ipuana (Wayuu weaver), Stefannia Doria (curator from Colombia) and Raquel van Haver (artist from Colombia and the Netherlands) - have created the basis for a collaborative artwork. The woven or knitted contributions from visitors to the Humboldt Forum and works from the Wayuu web community will be added and together form a collage co-created by all participants. It will continue to grow until spring.

The diorama Memory, Identity, Passing on is also a collaborative work. In a ten-day workshop, this collective, transgenerational family history was created from personal memories, family traditions and everyday actions.

As the family lineage is a central theme in the living room, we also present the new short film What Difference Would It Make If I Told You? by ŞOKOPOP (Ekim Acun) about inherited family secrets. Acun gives an insight into his family history, whose Kurdish-Zaza and Turkish-Armenian roots remained hidden from him for a long time. He reveals fragments of survival, activism and inherited silence - until a personal secret breaks the pattern of concealment.

Finally, discover stories of kinship, caring and special relationships in the Family Library for All. Curated by Black Dads Germany, the selection offers diverse books (ages 3+) with local and global perspectives. Black Dads Germany creates safe spaces for diverse fathers and children, strengthens families and connects communities across Germany.

Participants

Ekim Acun (Tunceli, 1988) studied film and television at the University of Roma Tre and at UAL: London College of Communication. He participated as a visual artist in various exhibitions in London and Istanbul. In 2018, he founded ŞOKOPOP, which deals with the themes of memory, gender and identity through the history of Turkish popular culture. He continues to explore sexuality and censorship through a queer lens with his documentary films, performances, collages and video works that emerge from intensive research processes.

The group Erinnerung, Identität, Weitergabe is a temporary collaborative project on transgenerational memory with Florian Hermes, Honorata Nawrocki, Marisol Ozomatli Malinalli, Leila, Franziska Pierwoss, Diana Krämer and Alia Rayyan.

Aliwaa Collective: The wall collage The Story of Waleka was created by the Aliwaa Collective. The Aliwaa Collective consists of Sindri Gonzales Ipuana (Wayuu weaver from Colombia), Stefannia Doria (curator from Colombia) and Raquel van Haver (artist from Colombia and the Netherlands).

Alain Missala leads a grassroots movement for Black men in Germany, with a particular focus on their identity as fathers. With this initiative, he is reshaping the public image of Black fatherhood in German society and placing Black narratives at the center of cultural representation. His work is particularly aimed at future generations and uses children's literature as a tool to promote positive representations of Black families. Alain encourages Black fathers to become change agents in their communities and drive long-term social transformation.

- Free admission

- Location: Special exhibition foyer, ground floor

- from 3 years

- Languages: German, English

- Opening hours: Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun: 10:30 - 18:30; Tue: closed

- Duration: 24.01.2026 to 03.08.2026