For the work “Dilek Ağacı” (Engl. "Wish Tree"), Paulina Akbay collaborates with the cultural worker and artist Melis Eda Poyraz. The installation aims to approach the cultural phenomenon of the wish tree presenting a diverse group of artists and cultural workers from the diaspora with roots in the area of Turkey and asking them about their wishes and utopias for the region and its diaspora. The aim is to take a speculative approach to tradition, artistic and cultural practices and the future of the area and its people, in which new images, culture and ways of being together can emerge.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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"memorial work in progress" portrays people who are fighting for political and societal reappraisal of the right-wing terrorist nail bomb attack committed by the NSU on Keupstraße in Cologne Mülheim in 2004 and uphold it’s memory, for example by insisting on the building of a memorial, sharing their experiences of the attack and the division it caused, on stages at demonstrations or in the theatre play “Die Lücke” (Engl. “The Gap“). They work in antiracist political education, do awareness-raising work and create community spaces. In the installative presentation, voices and demands of the protagonists complement the portraits.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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Joy and celebration in one’s identity serve as a profound form of political activism—an act often overlooked in favour of visible struggle. In a world that frequently sensationalises suffering to justify demands for change, I hope to help shift the visual narrative in the way I photograph and why I do. Change does not need to be accompanied by pain to be valid. It can be claimed with dignity, with joy as an act of defiance, and with the quiet power of self-affirmation.

For me Ballroom culture embodies this —a space of refuge, transformation, and radical authenticity. It is a realm where protest takes the form of movement, where resistance is woven into celebration, and where identity is both asserted and safeguarded. Since 2021, I have been documenting some of the ballroom scene and its members in Germany, striving to visually articulate what words cannot fully capture: magnetic defiance, and the alchemy of struggle into joy.

Shifting from my traditional documentation of practice sessions and efimerous moments and portraits, I was asked to document the Inside Out Kiki by Zanubia 007 and Kongolo Old Navy. A Kiki ball unlike any other I had been a part of, or walked, the vibrant energy of the room and beginners performance resonates with me to this day.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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Forests are torn down, ripped up by machines. Debris is left behind in cruel order or, rarely, trees are allowed to fall by themselves, forming barriers, resisting movement without instruction. Elsewhere, barricades are built by human hands. The very scraps of destruction are rearranged to defy its continuation.

Photographed around the Sündenwäldchen, a forest threatened by the coal industry, the work traces barricades in their different forms.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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The photo series "Iraqel Chachki" explores the aesthetics of a feminized body in contrast to a masculine body. It is not only a reflection on societal expectations of male appearance in “Middle Eastern” cultures but also a personal expression of my desire to present and explore an alternative image of myself.

Despite my hairy body, bald head, and thick, dark beard, I do not define myself as a “macho Arab/Kurdish man.” This open-ended series invites viewers to question and explore the concepts of masculinity and femininity, examining what happens when we merge the two or search for one within the other.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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Few topics are more present in German media than the Bundeswehr. The debt brake has been loosened, allowing nearly unlimited investments. A majority wants conscription back, though few would serve voluntarily. Military ads are everywhere in public space. I document them and hope that, simply by exhibiting them, it becomes clear how the Bundeswehr reveals its own contradictions.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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Orientalism in opera often manifests through stereotypical portrayals of Asian characters and settings. Madame Butterfly is a prime example, as it romanticizes and distorts Japanese culture, reflecting Western fantasies rather than providing an authentic representation. At the same time, it critiques imperialism and the destructive effects of cultural exploitation. By incorporating found footage of costume design in opera houses, Duoni seeks to highlight the role of Orientalism in shaping Western perceptions of Eastern cultures.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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The project "Let me give you a tour of my home" highlights the human cost of displacement, focusing on individuals who lost their homes due to wars or political oppression. Through portraits and personal narratives, it explores the enduring impact of Russian imperialism and the universal longing for home and belonging. Accompanied by audio stories and interviews, the exhibition sheds light on their journey to rebuild lives.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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The documentary 2-channel video work “By example” explores the driving school car as a social microcosm. One camera shows the rear-view mirrors - glances, fragments, emotions. The other follows the view outside. Between closeness and distance, an image of two people and a country passes by - a space of exchange, intimacy and social reflection.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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"Conteraction (control + interaction)" explores the paradoxical relationship between humans and plants: while humans control plants, the plants simultaneously influence human perception and environment. Plants are relocated from their natural habitats into interior spaces, where they depend on artificial conditions and continuous energy input to survive. An installation combining photographic images and a water plant cultivation system visualizes the tension between nature and technology, control and dependency.

Soojin Ok, "Conteraction (control + interaction)", 2025,
photographs printed on transparent foil & installation with water plants

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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What happens when we invite someone to share stories of the past across national borders? When family structures are transformed into alliances?

On the stepfather's land, stepfather and stepdaughter seek and find different stories and insights. With the return to the places of childhood - to a home that was destroyed by hegemonic violence - long-hidden memories are reawakened and interweave with the collective stories both locally and in the diaspora in Germany. We are faced with questions about belonging and identity and what solidarity can look like in the present.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG

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In the summer of 2024, I undertook a two-month journey along the route, documenting the symbolic representations of the “Long March” and the people who live along it. We live in an illusion constructed by false tales, our intentions are revealed as some kind of task, and our experiences are hammered into certain struggles. Within the narrative of the “Long March,” is there a wailing about the unfinished revolution? The image of the god we worship is so blurred as to be weathered by the vulgar soul. We seem to love suffering. It is true that, on the surface, we resist it, but if suffering is absent, it is followed by an uncontrollable emptiness.

Exhibition venue: GLASMOOG / Schaufenster (Friends' Corner)

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The starting point of the work “what's on the table belongs to everyone” is the conversion of a historic building complex and former home into a luxury hotel in the historic old town of Prague. It is an attempt to re-access past and future layers of a building and the relationships they create.

Exhibition venue: CASE

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"Places Speak of Genocide – Kurds Bring Them to Life" is a hybrid exhibition by Hesam Yousefi on memory, loss, and survival in Southern Kurdistan. Three Anfal survivors share their stories at meaningful places. The video installation is accompanied by photos of destroyed villages, graves, and remnants of war – silent witnesses to genocide.

Exhibition venue: CASE

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For several years now, I have been photographing fallen petals and leaves in everyday life - a photo series entitled “Little Things”. After the beginning of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran, during which many young people were killed on the streets in various cities by the regime of the Islamic Republic - I saw a photo of the gravestone of one of these young people. A picture that I had perhaps seen many times before, but this time it struck me differently.

The similarity between this picture and my own photographs was shocking: wilted flowers on gravestones. There is both a sense of beauty and sadness in this connection. This series is an exploration of photographs taken from two different perspectives - a personal juxtaposition of aesthetics and loss, of everyday observation and political reality.

Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER

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The latex installation “Do you wanna hear about the tear in my body?” (2025) deals with issues of reproduction, body experience and the stigmas surrounding chronic pain. From a queer-feminist perspective, it questions social expectations of sick bodies, guided by the artist's own experience with endometriosis. Addressing a lot of gender and body dysphoria, frustration and rage, it confronts pain and vulnerability of the body and calls for a new view of the body as a political and social instrument of capitalism.

Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER

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The configuration of our society is based on a majority of shared basic assumptions that characterise the way we see and interact with the world. The idea that economic growth is possible indefinitely, the assumption that humans can control nature through technological developments, the view of land as private property, etc. form a kind of social foundation that can be described as Common Ground.

Compared to the global average, the Alpine region is warming about twice as fast. In order to respond to this, attempts are being made to find answers that remain within the logic of the Common Ground, from which the problem of global warming has arisen.

Through the medium of photography, an extra position is taken in order to explore sites in the Alps as examples where the contradictions of the prevailing paradigm become visible. In a further step, the group of works will be supplemented by works that confront the current Common Ground with alternative narratives. The aim is to encourage reflection on commons-based concepts.

Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER

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"magdalena and the hyperimages" is one possible iteration of a large, shifting image group strategy. In this version, the images gather around "magdalena" — an avatar reflecting personal autistic thinking styles, modes of perception, and the visual capacity of objects and textures, as presented in a wall assemblage.

Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER

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Captured at train stations in the Cologne-Bonn area, the work explores the themes of change and departure, with train stations serving as symbolic crossroads between the past, present, and future. Through the arrangement, a visual connection is established between the different generations. The absence of clear visual markers encourages viewers to question existing stereotypes and provides space for a nuanced exploration of identity and transgenerational inheritance.

Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER

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Inspired by Frantz Fanon's reflections on how resistance to oppression often emerges from the very spaces used to oppress, this work explores the power that can arise from reclaiming those places. In the waters of the Atlantic, many of our stories converge. The ocean holds our experiences, our struggles – both the painful and the liberating. The protagonists in this work define their own understanding of empowerment and resistance, offering intimate insights into both their strength and their vulnerability. In doing so, they meet each other in an act of reclamation and redefinition.

This project attempts to visualize the connections that arise from shared experiences. Acts of resistance – as diverse as they may look – are bound together by a collective strength: the power of self-empowerment. And from this, a sense of agency is born that reaches far beyond the individual self.

Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER

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Thorns at night,

puncturing skin.

The smell of blood,

is sea.

Armors ambushing under sand,

Eyes on their back, dark

and black,

telling every stupidity in me,

accusing every neon color.
Life of thousands, millions years,

Space of 3 by 3,

Do time and space equal?

Freedom means death,

Preservation means confinement.

The history of this island opened its mouth,

all I see in deep, is purple.

Swirling up, purple morning glories,

Coastlines, you occupied arbitrarily.

A shooting star

sliding out of my eyes,

half second.

Blue tears glow,

coming with waves,

half second.

But human memory lasts.

“My body remembered that color,”

she said to me.

Before I left,

I put some ambiguous questions

into the washing machine,

nothing comes out white.

An island of abandonment,

an island of new colors.

• Exhibition venue: STUDIOFOYER
  
  

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Inmitten eskalierender Krisen – politisch, ökologisch und humanitär – nimmt die Ausstellung To Dwell in the Same Time and Space, die vom 16. Mai bis 14. Juni 2025 im Rahmen des Photoszene-Festivals in verschiedenen Ausstellungsräumen an der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln gezeigt wird, die individuellen und doch miteinander verwobenen Perspektiven und Gefühle der beteiligten Künstler*innen als Ausgangspunkt zur Beschäftigung mit Themen der Gegenwart.

Innerhalb der Komplexität der eigenen Fragestellungen erforschen die Studierenden des Lehrgebiets Fotografie an der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM), wie die zunehmend prekäre Realität mit den Mitteln der Kunst und des Aktivismus beschrieben und gleichzeitig hinterfragt werden kann. In einem System, das kaum wirksame Optionen bietet, den vorherrschenden Machtverhältnissen zu entkommen, kann die Kunst Bruchstellen erzeugen, durch die neue Möglichkeitsräume zum Vorschein kommen – jenseits der aktuellen zerstörerischen Kontexte. 

Die in der Ausstellung gezeigten rund zwanzig künstlerischen Arbeiten eröffnen ein breites Spektrum, das von eher subtil die Gegenwart reflektierenden Positionen bis hin zu explizit politischen künstlerischen Äußerungen reicht. Im Dialog miteinander bieten die Werke einen Ort zur Auseinandersetzung mit verschiedenen Themen und Lebensrealitäten, denen Erfahrungen des Ausgesetzt-Seins und der Fragilität gemeinsam sind. Aufgeworfen wird dabei die Frage, wie der Ausstellungsraum, ein Ort, welcher von verschiedenen Politiken geprägt ist und gleichzeitig als White Cube trotz aller institutionskritischen Selbstreflexion immer auch den Anspruch erhebt, eine Art Vakuum darzustellen, den Betrachtenden noch Perspektiven bieten kann, ihre eigenen Standpunkte neu zu denken.

Ausstellungsorte:

GLASMOOG - Raum für Kunst & Diskurs (Heumarkt 14)

CASE - Projektraum der Fotografie (Große Witschgasse 9-11)

KHM-Studiofoyer (Filzengraben 2, Innenhof).

Öffnungszeiten: Do/Fr 16-20 Uhr, Sa 12-18 Uhr, 

und nach Vereinbarung, feiertags geschlossen.

+++ Termine +++

Eröffnung:  Donnerstag, 15.05.2025, 18-22 Uhr