With Orawan Arunrak, Tra My Nguyen, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Riar Rizaldi, Sungsil Ryu, Natasha Tontey, Jala Wahid

Exhibition design by Martha Schwindling

Those who ghost make themselves immortal – because the sudden and unexplained break-off of a relationship does not provide the final closure, but leaves all ends open. With the rise of social media, the ghost-like disappearance of people, referred to as “ghosting”, has become a means of communication which is used to avoid unwelcome conflicts. But these live on in new shapes, as hauntings, recurrences and echo effects of former relationships. Ghosting goes far beyond unfinished online chats: ghosts of the past are a part of our present. They tell stories with open endings, mix different levels of time and revive forgotten places. Ghosts can thus respond to a present marked by crises, financial speculation, social uprooting and medial acceleration. GHOSTING asks how, against this background, the haunting of the past helps us transcend the limitations of the present – and thus facilitates new readings of the future.

The almost six-month exhibition is presented in two chapters. The changing spatial situation tells different stories, opens up new perspectives on the supposedly familiar and highlights the factor of time as a turning moment.

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Chapter I: 14 May – 21 July 2023

Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings: In My Room (2020)

Natasha Tontey: Garden Amidst the Flame (2022)

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Chapter II: 22 July 2023 – 29 October 2023

Riar Rizaldi: Notes from Gog Magog (2022)

Sungsil Ryu: The Burning Love Song (2022)

Jala Wahid: Cry Me a Waterfall (2021)

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All dates for events such as openings and guided tours can be found at the annual programme GHOSTING.

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Orawan Arunrak is a Thai artist who lives and works between Bangkok and Berlin. She seeks to merge the space of art and non-art in dialogues with the respective local population. Her work was last shown within the framework of Ghost;2565, Bangkok (2022) and at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2021). Currently, her work is on view at the group show “The Educational Web” at Kunstverein Hamburg. Orawan Arunrak is a participant of the BPA Berlin program for artists.

Tra My Nguyen is a Berlin-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture, moving image and textile. Nguyen’s work engages with speculative narratives to explore intersections of gender, labour, migration and technology in neoliberalism. Her work has been exhibited at the State of Fashion Biennale in Arnhem (2022), the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2021), Kühlhaus Berlin (2020), and Human Resources in Los Angeles (2018).In 2020, she was awarded the Jury Prize of the Fashion Positions Award. Nguyen participated in artist residencies at Dadapost in Berlin (2020) and Intermix Residency in Riyadh (2022/23).

Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings are a London-based artist duo whose work encompasses painting, drawing, video, performance, publishing and installation. Quinlan and Hastings’ collaborative practice is grounded in research on how various communities have been represented at different moments in history. Through their work, they explore the different forms of authority, power and disorder within our public spaces. They recently had solo shows at The Box Plymouth (2023), Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Osnabrück (both 2022), Huset For Kunst & Design, Arcadia Missa (both 2021), and Isabella Bortolozzi Berlin (2020), and have taken part in group shows at The Hepworth Wakefield (2023), CNAC Grenoble, the National Gallery Prague, the British Museum, High Art Arles (all 2022), and the Future Generation Art Prize Kiev (2021).

Natasha Tontey is an Indonesian artist. In her practice, she observes any possibilities of other futures that are projected not from the perspective of major and established institutions, but a personal struggle of the outcasted entities and beings. Her recent exhibitions include a solo show at Auto Italia, London (2022) and selected group shows at Singapore Biennale (2022), De Stroom Den Haag (2022), GHOST;2565, Bangkok (2022), Protozone8 Queer Trust / Shedhalle Zürich (2022); Arko Art Council, Seoul (all 2022), and transmediale, Berlin (2021). In 2020, she received the HASH Award from the ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Akademie Schloss-Solitude. She is a fellow for Human Machine of the Junge Akademie at Akademie der Künste Berlin 2021-2023.

Riar Rizaldi is an artist and filmmaker. His artistic practice focuses on the relationship between capital and technology, labour and nature, worldviews, genre cinema, and the possibility of theoretical fiction. His works have been shown at various international film festivals (including Locarno, IFFR, Viennale, BFI London, Cinema du Reel, Vancouver, etc) as well as at the Seoul Museum of Art (2023), the 17^th Istanbul Biennial (2022) , Centre Pompidou Paris, Venice Architecture Biennale, Biennale Jogja (all 2021), Times Museum Guangzhou (2020), NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, and National Gallery of Indonesia (both 2019) amongst others.

Sungsil Ryu is a Seoul-based artist whose paintings and installations refer to so-called black comedies of Korean everyday life – in global dimensions. She has had solo exhibitions at the Fondation d'entreprise Hermès, Seoul (2022) and the Post Territory Ujeongguk in Seoul (2019). Ryu has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Daelim Museum, Arko Art Museum, CAN Foundation (all 2020), Hapjungjigu, Art Space Boan (both 2019), Platform L, and the Ilmin Museum of Art (both 2018). The Burning Love Song was part of the exhibition of the same name with which Ryu won the 19th Hermès Foundation Art Award in 2022 at Atelier Hermes, Seoul.

Jala Wahid works across sculpture, film, sound, writing and installation. She is interested in the emotive potential of archives, music, literature, dance, theatre and fashion, to reveal the poetics and performativity of politics, whilst articulating the colonial and interregional politics that shape diasporic Kurdish identity. Recent exhibitions include solo institutional shows at Kunstverein Freiburg (2023), Tramway Glasgow (2023) and BALTIC (2022-23). She has also had solo exhibitions at Two Queens, Leicester (2022), CAS Batumi, Georgia (2021) and and been in group exhibitions at Centre for Contemporary Arts Goldsmiths (2022); SculptureCenter, New York; Nottingham Contemporary (both 2019) and Arnolfini, Bristol (2019).