What is increasingly viewed as under threat in Western democracies is given a new perspective in the exhibition “Freiräume – Between Change and Resistance” at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, on view through March 14, 2027. Nine international non-white female artists with personal or family histories of migration explore different spaces of freedom, the threats they face, and their resilience through large-scale, multimedia works developed primarily for this exhibition. They reflect on historical and contemporary injustices that their families and they themselves have experienced, thereby creating spaces in which a different, more conciliatory world becomes visible.
Visitors Become Participants
Eight immersive installations invite visitors to experience spaces of freedom as active zones of care, collective resistance, and healing. In the process, the audience itself becomes an active participant: whether in a gaming scenario at a hookah bar, during the ritualized hammering of nails, or in spaces that rearrange hierarchies and make communication tangible solely through vibration, touch, and sound.
The perspectives on display—ranging from Congolese rituals to Latin American river cosmologies—encourage a profound shift in perspective. This is precisely what makes the exhibition so compelling: “Freiräume” does not provide ready-made answers, but rather creates space for new ways of thinking, community, and visions of the future.
