Ulf Aminde’s artworks and films deal with public space, challenging conventional forms of remembrance through projects that evoke collective learning environments and experimental settings that seek not only to represent social issues but to shape them. Aminde creates projects of critical memory in which the political structures of commemorative spaces are exposed and shared, avoiding the dangers of instrumentalization in order to foreground the perspective and agency of those most affected. His recent participatory project Anti-Racist Memorial Keupstraße (2016–ongoing) was created in cooperation with survivors and local residents to commemorate victims of racist attacks by the neo-Nazi organization National Socialist Underground (NSU) in Cologne, specifically on Probsteigasse (2001) and Keupstraße (2004). As with Aminde’s other projects, the emphasis on social change is crucial as he believes this ‘becomes possible when we acknowledge structural conditions that continually reproduce racism and make the decision to change these conditions’. For Musafiri: Of Travellers and Guests, Aminde’s sixteen flags, originally commissioned for HKW’s 2024 exhibition Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld, fly once again. They insist on rearticulating HKW’s entrance as a space that commemorates the people who lost their lives to right-wing violence, many of whom were migrants, while at the same time demanding the rights of those who live on. The project, entitled Klage (2024–), features a list of people from different communities in Germany who have been killed as a result of right-wing attacks since 1990. As a participatory project, Klage continues the process set in motion during its initial phase, which, rather than presenting a finished memorial site, asks for deliberation and collective engagement on how prevalent systemic racism continues to be.

Work in the exhibition: Klage (Remembering the victims of right-wing violence in Germany since 1990 // 2nd activation) (2024–), series of 16 flags, dimensions vary. Design: operative.space, courtesy of the artist