Nadia Kaabi-Linke. Seeing Without Light

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In her solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke explores hidden traces of violence that unnoticed shape history and the present. The exhibition confronts historical erasure and examines the role of censorship and violence in the art and political history of Central Europe. The focus is on the project “Reactive Current Extracts” (2023), which refers to a collection of paintings censored and confiscated by the Soviet secret service in the 1930s. Today the collection is housed in the National Art Museum of Ukraine. In addition, the new production “Bud'mo”, a video-sound project produced in Ukraine in spring 2023, will be shown for the first time at Hamburger Bahnhof.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke, born in Tunis in 1978 with a Ukrainian and Tunisian background, presents the project “Reactive Current Extracts” (2023) at Hamburger Bahnhof. The version of the work originally conceived for the National Art Museum of Ukraine, adapted for Berlin, deals with the so-called “Spezfond” collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine. The collection includes works from the 1920s and 1930s, including the painting “Harvest Viewing” (1937), which is shown in Berlin. Due to the events depicted or the formalism represented in Ukraine at the time, these works were confiscated by the Soviet central government in Moscow. Some of the artists were persecuted, imprisoned and executed, but the planned destruction of the paintings failed due to the invasion of the German Wehrmacht.

In addition to works from two decades of artistic creation, the specially created video and sound installation “Bud'mo” (2023) will be shown. The multi-channel projection transports visitors to the so-called “partisan forest” Chronyi Lis (German for black leaves) and the Bronetskyi Forest in Galicia. It tells of historical connections and forgotten or hidden overlaps in Ukrainian, German and Russian history.