The project In den Zelten (In the tents) by the interdisciplinary artist duo Antje Majewski and Olivier Guesselé-Garai is inspired by the historic tentes des réfugiés (tents for refugees) on the site of today’s HKW. This is where persecuted Huguenots were permitted to sell beverages and food. Originally laid
out as a royal hunting ground, Frederick II opened the surrounding Großer Tiergarten to the Berlin public in, the mid-eighteenth century. Festive gatherings were held there, but the park was also a central site for the German revolutions of 1848/49. During the Weimar Republic, the area around the park developed into a lively neighbourhood; Magnus Hirschfeld, for instance, founded the world’s first institute for sexology here in 1919, which was shut down by the National Socialists in 1933. Today, the Zeltenplatz—a semi-circular plaza diagonally opposite HKW—is a reminder of the site’s historic past. For Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld, Majewski and Guesselé-Garai designed a dynamic tent installation in the Forough Farrokhzad Garden that is in a constant state of transformation. The duo invites visitors to collaborate in creating the artwork during workshops throughout the run of the exhibition. Participants can recite and record their own poems, for example, which become part of the installation. Based on images from the archives of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, they are encouraged to create self-portraits and artistic representations of plants and animals from Großer Tiergarten. As a monolithic monument, HKW’s building, the former congress hall, stands in stark contrast to Majewski and Guesselé-Garai’s work, which shifts boundaries through its transformative character.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Antje Majewski, Olivier Guesselé-Garai, and HKW, 2024

Work in the exhibition: In den Zelten (2024), installation, mixed media on canvas, dimensions vary. Courtesy of the artists