Back Home

On 4 and 5 August, Gropius Bau will host a two-day programme taking place within Henrike Naumann’s installation 2000, to come together and discuss the role of cultural and artistic work in times of the war in Ukraine. 2000 was shown as part of the Future Generation Art Prize shortlist in PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Thanks to the initiative of the museum staff of PinchukArtCentre, the installation was recently evacuated from Kyiv and brought to the Gropius Bau.

2000 takes the millennium changeover year as a starting point to look at the 1990s in East and West Germany, and the after-effects of postmodern design on German society. The installation consists of furniture pieces, design objects and relics of that time, coming from the artist’s personal archive, Expo 2000 in Hannover and the living rooms of Mönchengladbach.

Henrike Naumann was born in Zwickau, GDR and lives and works in Berlin. She reflects socio-political phenomena on the level of interior design and domestic space and explores antagonistic political beliefs through the ambivalent aesthetics of personal taste. Growing up in Eastern Germany, Naumann experienced Neo-Nazis as a predominant youth culture in the 1990s. Therefore, she is interested in the mechanisms of radicalization and its links to personal experience.

Back Home is curated by Zippora Elders and Julia Grosse, with the support of Leonie Schmiese, Lijuan Klassen and Sarah Crowe.