The House on Lützowplatz 2023, 2023
Dressing the wound in Berlin: The House on Lützowplatz, a site-specific installation (2023) was shown in 2 shows, one curated by Liav Mizrahi “Who by Fire, on Israel” and “Architecture & Morality, HaL under construction,” curated by Asja Wolf.
I left for Berlin with a suitcase full of bandages.
I knew that the exhibition ‘Who By Fire’ was taking place in the very house that had once belonged to a Jewish family, The Fürstenberg, forced to flee Nazi Germany and sell their house for very little in 1938 to the Association of Berlin Artists. Eventually following a court case its ownership was transferred back to the heirs in 1959 and sold in 1961 to the Berlin Fördererkreis cultural center.
Although I was exhibiting two videos from my Wounded Land series: The Olive Tree (2011) and After the Watchman (2018), it was important for me to create a work in memory of the Fürstenberg, especially since the gallery is on the same floor where lived the family before the war.
In the installation there is a bandaged map of Berlin with one red dot marking the location of the Fürstenberg’s family house, a black and white image of the house dated 1908 that I found in the archives of the site and on the floor, an old east-Berlin suitcase full of gauze and a vintage enamel bowl with sanguine red ink.
At the end of the show I donated the Dressed map of Berlin to the association of the House on Lützowplatz. Six month later curator Asja Wolf recreated my installation “The House on Lützowplatz” for her show “Architecture & Morality, HaL under construction,” a show on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Haus am Lützowplatz association that showcase a historical research and plans of the new building that will serve as housing for artists and provide new exhibition spaces.
Asja Wolf writes: “The title of the exhibition recalls this discourse on the manifestations of architecture and the moral dimension inscribed in it. Based on a work by the Israeli artist Ariane Littman exploring the incomprehensible past of Haus am Lützowplatz, “Architecture & Morality” traces the history of the building at Lützowplatz 9, which was constructed in 1873 in the style of a neoclassical city villa and only became an exhibition venue in 1940 through the injustices perpetrated by the Nazis.”
Press on “Who by Fire – On Israel”
