Die fehlende Folge ('The Missing Episode')

Die fehlende Folge ('The Missing Episode') is Anike Joyce Sadiq’s first exhibition with Sakhile&Me, following the 2021 group exhibition Gaabo Motho which explored the physical, psychological, relational, domestic and environmental aspects of "home" or one’s sense of belonging.

After an invitation to the competition for the Braunschweig Colonial Monument in 2023, Sadiq developed a work titled "Denkmalschutz aufheben" which reflected on the war memorial. Since then, the question of practices of remembrance and in particular the handling of "uncomfortable monuments" has become the subject of several of the artist’s works. In addition to the work on the war memorial, she also participated in the open call pertaining to the imperial eagle ('Reichsadler') on the Ulm tax office.

The exhibition Die fehlende Folge ('The Missing Episode') ties in with this exploration and is dedicated to the Eiernest housing development in Stuttgart, which today is under cultural heritage protection, and the artist’s own subjective memories growing up in its migrant neighborhood during the 1980s and 1990s - a time that is omitted in a three-episode television documentary about the history of the Eiernest, produced by the SWR in 2021. The artist asks, what is the consequence of these excluded episodes?

Sadiq creates an immersive and site-specific installation with a collection of photographs, address books showing the changes and shifts of residents, "ownership" from the housing being a state initiative turned over to privatized housing, a short video clip of television shows that used the neighbourhood as a filming set and a voice recording of artist Hüseyin Altin as a sound piece in the exhibition.

Piecing together these elements from her own subjective memories of the neighbourhood she grew up in as a migrant neighbourhood, the exhibition is anchored and framed by a life-sized replica of a common meeting area built into the original Eiernest and still existing today. At the center of this common area stands a sculpture by Hüseyin Altin who was commissioned by the city of Stuttgart to create this public work. Altin’s voice carries through the space as he retraces his own memories and experiences of coming from Turkey to Germany in the 1970s and making his way to art school. These segments – retrieved and reconstructed objects and shared stories, photographs, recordings, and build environments - are gathered up in one place as collective memories, re-mappings, and way-finders, helping to re-member some parts of the missing episodes from the 1980s and 1990s.

In German, the phrase "Die fehlende Folge" also holds a double meaning, on one hand referring to the missing sequence/episode (in the documentary series), but also translating to missing consequence(s).

With special thanks to Hüseyin Altin, Sibel Adakçi, Sebastian Bodirsky, and nGbK Berlin (AG knotting unruly ties) for their contributions to and support of this project.