Gunst/Favor

Viet Phuong Nguyen (TIEV), on the one hand a journeyman with three years of training as a ceramist and on the other hand part of the self-taught art collective BIKINI KOMMANDO. These formative periods of his life, which emphasise his appearance as an artistic ceramist from both a craft and artistic perspective, could hardly be more contradictory in their combination.

TIEV’s works contain a recognisable rigour of craftsmanship, which at the same time finds contradiction in his childlike defiance of the outdated image of ceramics. The process of his creations is always planned from spontaneity, experimenting and testing new and old techniques, such as baking.

As part of the project, Valentin Mici presented an open-air photographic exhibition for which he took portraits of Sonnenberg residents in their everyday lives and had personal conversations about privilege, social inequality and solidarity. When he photographed a person and struck up a conversation with them, he immediately handed out an invitation to the exhibition with the promise of being able to pick up the print of the analogue black and white photograph, his own portrait. His aim was to make visible the often invisible social dynamics of a neighbourhood in which different realities of life exist side by side. The chosen location – a playground on Fürstenstraße – was deliberately chosen to symbolise equal opportunities and the negotiation of social values. The portraits were not just pictures, but also invitations to dialogue and expressions of appreciation. Valentin Mici’s working method shows how art can become a tool for entering into dialogue and directly negotiating social issues and assumptions.

We are delighted that the finale of the first Dialogue Field 2025 was once again great! Valentin Mici lovingly designed a particularly inviting outdoor exhibition. Shubhangi Singh served ice cream, which was not only delicious, but also told stories. Maja Simišić crowned the day with a performance on the theatre square, where she performed a song somewhere between a love song and a break-up song. Time to look back for a moment!

Shubhangi Singh travelled from Helsinki and Maja Simišić from Amsterdam for a 6-week residency with us on the Sonnenberg. Chemnitz photographer Valentin Mici accompanied them with a local perspective. After five weeks of exchange with each other, with residents and actors in the city, their own research, joint visits to public places, exhibitions, bars, clubs, studios, second-hand shops and snack bars, the moment of publicly announced exchange arrived. There had already been conversations and encounters with many Chemnitz residents, but this time visitors were invited to experience the artistic interventions directly and become part of them.

On the first Saturday of the Intervention Week (19 April), the artists in residence took a walk together with interested visitors and showed them places that had become important to them during the weeks of their residency. These were places where they frequently spent time, had special encounters or that were connected to their projects. On site, they talked about their work processes and gave insights into what they would present as an intervention in public space the following Saturday. The artists led the group of visitors from the Sonnenberg-Netto, via the Sonnenberg sundial and the playground on Rüdiger-Alberti-Platz, to the Gießer-Eck snack bar.

On the second Saturday of the intervention week (26 April), the artists were visible with their actions and performances on the Sonnenberg and beyond in the urban space.

These were days full of discussions, encounters and inspiration. During the research, the co-creative production process and, last but not least, during the public presentation, the artists and local people exchanged personal and European perspectives on the reality of our lives and, in some cases, forged intensive connections. We are delighted with the openness and interest shown by the visitors and, above all, the participating artists. We would like to thank all the residents of the Sonnenberg involved in the project, the staff of the Chemnitz Botanical Garden, Cassandra Schramm, Jamie Mulcahy and Radarstudios for their technical support, as well as the Chemnitz Open Space of the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz and a wonderful backing band that we would love to hear more of.

Since their arrival in Chemnitz, Shubhangi Singh and Maja Simišić have intensively networked with the city and its inhabitants. For them, space, time and what happens in between are the starting point for new discoveries and artistic considerations.

Shubhangi Singh continued her practice of lingering and taking notes in public spaces and came across the rotating clocks in the city centre of Chemnitz. These clocks are no longer actually functional timepieces, but are used as advertising media. In the end, however, they often remain empty. A cuboid with spaces for large posters beneath the clocks rotates slowly in an anti-clockwise direction, which for Shubhangi Singh makes them a symbol of the shifting and reinterpretation of public time and space. Her reflections revolve around the political dimension of public clocks, which for her have always reflected power structures – be it through the church or science, which determined time. For her, these clocks are not only relics of the past, but also a form of control that creates a space that is public and yet controlled.

For several years, Shubhangi Singh has been exploring the connections between (colonial) botany and science and their relationship to contemporary war production. To this end, she has also networked with the Botanical Garden in Chemnitz. She is interested in the investigation of duplicates within plant samples as well as counterfeiting and fabrication in colonial sciences. She wonders which characteristics make a sample a duplicate and what constitutes an “original” in botany. This knowledge could perhaps also open up new perspectives on the logic of people and nationalities.

For Maja Simišić, it is above all the vacant buildings in the city that she repeatedly addresses in her thoughts. There are numerous vacant buildings in Chemnitz, which is often less the case in large cities. In the metropolises, studio spaces are hardly affordable and space for art projects or flats is hard to find. For Maja Simišić, vacancy is not only a sign of decay, but also of opportunity. Although it has negative aspects for Chemnitz because it shows that there is a lack of people to revitalise these spaces, there is also hope that not everything is full yet – which leaves room for ideas and creative projects.

The artists’ interventions, which they will be presenting from 19 April, deal with these issues and invite people to question and redesign public spaces. It is not about definitive answers, but about a questioning debate.

The interventions will be accompanied by Valentin Mici, who has lived in Chemnitz for over 10 years now and brings his own perspective on the city and the project. Valentin is in the process of taking portraits of people on the Sonnenberg, which will then be developed and become part of a small exhibition in public space and a joint discussion in the neighbourhood.

Join us and let us invite you to be thereon 19 April at 4 pm at Lokomov (Sonnenberg). We look forward to seeing you there.

Stay tuned for more impressions from the ongoing process!

Artists Shubhangi Singh and Maja Simišić from Finland and the Netherlands arrive on 14 March. Over the next 6 weeks, they will explore the city of Chemnitz and invite visitors to the Sonnenberg for a week of artistic interventions from 19 April. The interventions will be accompanied by an artistic spin-off by Chemnitz artist Valentin Mici.

An intensive welcome weekend from 14 to 16 March marks the start. With the support of Jamie Mulcahy (out of order), there will be guided tours of the city, talks and initial encounters. Valentin Mici will accompany the event with an artistic spin-off.

Shubhangi Singh plans to continueher work Noticing and Note-Taking, in which urban spaces are examined as meeting places and their social dynamics are captured through anecdotes, drawings and photographs. Maja Simišić uses her multimedia practice to challenge social expectations and develop new narratives.

Stay tuned and follow us for impressions from the process.

This project is part of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025. This project is co-financed by tax funds on the basis of the parliamentary budget of the state of Saxony and by federal funds from the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media), as well as by the Finnish Institute and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

My name is Valentin Mici. I was born in Romania, grew up in Gelenau and since 2014 I have been living in Chemnitz, which has now become my home. For the past five years, I have dedicated myself intensively to black and white photography and the development process in the photo lab.

I consciously decided against commissioned photography because I prefer to organise my work freely and independently – in every respect. Discovering photography as a means of expression fills me with enthusiasm, as it gives me the opportunity to influence my work in two different ways. Not only at the moment I press the shutter release, but also in the photo lab, where I have the freedom to further refine and realise my ideas until the result meets my expectations.

I find myself in a constant state of tension between the living, organic moments of people and the graphic elements such as structure and contrast. These two worlds – the human and the graphic – unite in my work and give it a special dynamic that reflects both naturalness and clear structure.