23 ARTISTS
Group-exhibition curated by
Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert &
Aylin Scheer
This past year, almost all days have felt like one. The same routine, the same rooms, the same uneasy feeling rising every morning. We adjusted and adapted, almost to a scary point – are our brains capable of making everything bearable, even isolation? Every day became well-crafted performances in which we did not meet anyone new, did not listen to any new stories and were not able to indulge into other visions and creations. In a city like Berlin and at a time in our lives where are all we have are others, we had to take a step back.
The only way to push forward was to look back. We held onto the memories of friends, lovers and strangers we once were able to hold, hug, kiss, fuck, party and discuss with. The hope to soon be able to be part of a community again was what drove us – hoping and knowing that events like this one would happen soon.
This is what Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert and Aylin Scheer wish to share here. The twenty-three artists exhibited at the first show the P7 Gallery is holding since 2018 are showing what it means to create during complex times and how to rise during and after them. Evidently, in no way can we assume that the pandemic is behind us or that tough times will not come again. However, one of the most important lesson we learnt from being queer is that to rise means to be able to form a community. We only grow if we do it together.
The P7 Gallery and the artists it has worked with have repeatedly highlighted queer bodies, perspectives, and sensitivities as political. This exhibition is no exception - selves not abiding to societal nor political norms are the ones pushed to the forefront. To unapologetically be after the two years we have been through is more than ever one of the greatest forms of freedom. As we slid away from being to reflecting, from living to reminiscing and from exploring to contemplating, we have also come to understand that what matters is not necessarily what one is. To be queer is not just to have non-heteronormative sex or to put a label on oneself. Queerness revolves around the gazes which define you, the conversations you hold, the bodies you touch and the ones who touch you back, the spaces you create for others. Therefore, to re-emerge as individuals, as artists and as queers the way the P7 Gallery is re-emerging with Heute ist nicht alle Tage, we need to speak as one, but also to speak as a community.
What we are does not matter as much as the stories we decide to listen to. Let’s listen.
Text by Hugo Scheubel
