Yangkun Shi & Charlotte Ming: Currents
In the course of the Dekoloniale Artist Residency 2024 “Colonial Ghosts – Resistant Spirits: Church, Colonialism and beyond” at the exhibition Dekoloniale – what remains?!, five selected guest artists present their works at the Museum Nikolakirche and also work with and in the public space of Berlin.
Yangkun Shi & Charlotte Ming: Currents
Charlotte Ming and Yangkun Shi’s collaborative and interdisciplinary work brings to light the obscured history of German colonialism in China combining photography, video, writing, archival imagery, and the explorations of foodways. Their work traces the legacies of this history across urban landscapes from Qingdao to Berlin, exposing this forgotten past and its underlying violence. Intertwining personal and historical narratives, they challenge and reframe the colonial gaze to re-center contemporary migration experiences.
The art works
The installations connect Qingdao and Berlin through the themes of ocean, water, and sand, revealing their colonial pasts and present in urban landscapes.
Mirage
The screenprint technique in Prussian blue reveals a ghostly image of the Iltis warship on the sea of Qingdao – an echo of its role in the Boxer Rebellion and its sinking during the Siege of Tsingtao in WWI.Between the Waves
The video installation examines the transformation of Qingdao into a beach resort for Europeans within a racially segregated colony. By interweaving personal memories and migration experiences, the work challenges the dominant colonial narrative, largely shaped by German perspectives. It seeks to re-center the Chinese experiences, restoring a sense of agency and healing.Greetings from Kiautschou Street
This artwork is a series of recreated postcards that seek to challenge the colonial gaze in historical postcards from the German colonial era.
Inspired by colonial-era postcards sent home by colonists with “greetings” from colonized lands, Charlotte Ming sends home her own postcards from Berlin streets that bear colonial names.
Featuring night-time photographs of these streets captured by Yangkun Shi, the series aims to invert the colonial gaze and confront the remnants of colonialism through a migrant perspective. A participatory intervention was staged at Pekinger Platz.
Yangkun Shi & Charlotte Ming
Yangkun Shi is a Shanghai-based photographer and visual artist whose work visualizes hidden histories and underlying traumas and violence. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Peabody Essex Museum and the Shanghai Center of Photography.
Charlotte Ming is a Berlin-based journalist, writer, and artist visual editor exploring the themes of culture, history, and migration. Bridging the historical with the personal, her long-term research examines the cultures of memory surrounding the German colonial past in China, particularly in her hometown Qingdao.
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Differing opening hours:
Tue – Fri | 10. – 13.06. | closed (change of exhibition)
Thu | 19.06. | 10 am – 2 pm | closed from 2 pm onwards (private event)
Sat | 21.06. (Museum Festival / Fête de la Musique) | 10 am – 10 pm | free admission
Sat | 30.08. (Long Night of the Museums) | 10 am – 2 am
daily | 15.09. – 02.10. | closed (change of exhibition) 10. | closed (exhibition set-up)
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Fri | 26.12. (Boxing Day) | 12 – 6 pm
Wed | 31.12. (New Year’s Eve) | closed
Thu | 01.01. (New Year’s Day) | 12 – 6 pm
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