Galerie Christian Hosp proudly presents the first European solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke. Under the title TATORT, curator Jamila Adeli brings together eight of the artist’s most recent works in an exhibition that engages in all kinds of imprints of life, examining carefully the places of crime. Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s „crime scenes“ are locations where evidence becomes visible: graffiti on city walls or scratches on windowpanes. In her work, these unnoticed human legacies become conspicuous and expose what fades in the banality of the daily life.

The exhibition title thus invites the viewer to approach her works in terms of criminology. Like a detective, Nadia Kaabi-Linke is interested in traces and stories left behind on „crime scenes.“ She processes her „crime scenes“ in an almost forensic manner, making hidden cracks and contours visible to our optical reality. With the help of forensic powder, for example, she takes imprints of scratches and graffiti on subways and bus shelter windows and transfers them onto glass. The artist explains: „because human skin, too, gets into contact with the glass windows, sebum, a physical part of the body, is left behind as a trace. It’s kind of eerie because the people were really there and have left behind traces of skin and hair.“

Kaabi-Linke converts violent human actions into filigreed beauties. The most drastic example thereof is the installation Fleischerei Glück, 2010, showing precious porcelain imprints of dried cow stomachs. The inscription on Walter benjamin’s gravestone – „There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism“ – illuminates what Nadia Kaabi–Linke’s artworks emphasize: aesthetic beauty and human violence merged together in the moment of an event.



NADIA KAABI-LINKE. TATORT
SEPTEMBER 25 – NOVEMBER 13, 2010