On Wednesday, February 12, from 6 p.m., the opening of the photography exhibition of the German artist Iwajla Klinke takes place at the Borderline Art Space in the author’s presence. Entitled “Winter Hexagon”, the exhibition is curated by Luminița Apostu Toma and can be visited until March 3, 2025.
The exotic is just a stone’s throw away wherever you are, and you can’t even see the brightest stars in the city sky. Only if you look closely, six alpha stars from different constellations form a circle around the Milky Way in winter. The series of photographs that Iwajla Klinke is exhibiting at Borderline Art Space shines through this outline.
The characters that Iwajla Klinke captures are in moments of transformation, but not in the privacy of personal space, where adolescence hatches unseen, but in situations of public solemnity, in the middle of the community, in the middle of a ritual. Through her own artistic ritual, she stages the aesthetics of studio painting, then captures the subjects always on the spot and manages to tame the natural light with the darkness of a background. The atmosphere of studio photography thus combines early 20th century practices with the technical sophistication of fashion photography, but also with that gas of documentary portraiture.
“Photography makes the moment before and after the photograph disappear,” says Jeff Wall. Likewise, a lightning strike causes a pearl to appear in a shell. Just as winter numbs nature in a stop-frame not made by human hands, the images of this exhibition also freeze the gaze between fascination, obsession and contrariety.
The “Winter Hexagon” exhibition breathes an instinctive parade spirit, similar to the 70s when David Bowie was redefining the boundaries of masculinity with his iconic costumes. She brings more than the glamor of some effervescent boys in androgynous poses. The small demonstration of Iwajla Klinke’s clean, vigorous and recognizable style of photography projects a creative reinterpretation of the portrait. But it also puts on the table the poetic layers of the myth of passage (from one year to another, from one age to another) as only the eyes of the other can see them, from the distance between genders, from the earth to the stars.
Iwajla Klinke (b. 1976) is a Berlin-based visual artist whose work explores cultural identity, historical memory, as well as gender and masculinity through photography and mixed media. With a background in Art History, Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies at FU Berlin, she has exhibited widely in Germany and internationally in cities such as Berlin, Paris, Vienna, São Paulo, Toronto and New York. Her retrospective, “The Nymphs are Departed”, hosted this year by the Diözesanmuseum München/Freising (March-August 2025), will present nearly 40 large-scale works. Her most recent project, “Schöne Neue Welt”, was exhibited at Galerie Anita Beckers in Frankfurt (2024). Klinke is acclaimed for her evocative visual narratives and technical mastery.
The exhibition is organized by Borderline Art Space through the AltIasi Cultural Association and is co-financed by the German Cultural Center Iasi through the Goethe Institute.
