Between Cabbages and Cypresses
Garden art on the rivers Emscher and Ruhr
Winter at Alte Emscher river at the Kaisergarten / Emschergenossenschaft/ Photo: Ira Hellenthal
The Ruhr metropolis has a unique variety of garden art. For the first time ever in a museum, the exhibition - designed in cooperation with the Emschergenossenschaft - will show garden art between the Emscher and Ruhr rivers from 18th century Rococo to today.
Because they have always been places of commemoration and community-building, gardens are also places of remembrance. Each newly created garden is an intervention into an existing and at the same time dynamically changing cultural landscape. Thus the Ruhr's parks and gardens also represent the transformation of the region.
Newly created gardens were dialectic thresholds between private and public spaces, between power and participation. While the gardens initially simply marked empty spaces in the Ruhr’s industrial landscapes, their role has changed: Partly as a result of the ongoing de-industrialization, they now help provide a sense of identity.
Breeching city and mental boundaries, the gardens are a starting point on the road to a united green Ruhr metropolis. The combination of abandoned industrial lands transformed into gardens with the Ruhr’s characteristic landmarks is an attempt at mapping the region’s past cultural and industrial landscape while at the same time creating a sense of community.
February 21 - May 30, 2010, Gallery Ludwig, Oberhausen
The exhibition is part of the Ruhr art museums' Mapping the Region project.
You can find additional information (in German) at:
www.ludwiggalerie.de
Related topic:
exhibitions