Studio Martha Schwindling

The exhibition series Gegenbilder | Counter Images is dedicated to the power of the visual and illuminates the role of photography in writing, conveying and remembering history. The opening exhibition Prolog is an intervention within the permanent exhibition.
The counter-images presented illuminate the photographic process as an interplay between many participants – photographers and photographed, collectors and archivists, curators and viewers – and expose the unequal power relations in images, including those from the colonial era.
At the same time, artistic counter-positions use photography as an instrument of resistance and of self-empowerment by challenging the photographs in the collection with new narratives and interpretations, and by inviting us to rethink and question.

The display system is based on our previous project RACK and makes it possible to intervene in the existing permanent exhibition and to adapt it to new situations and works in the course of the exhibition series.