Doctoral student Nora Laraki, who is completing a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Art, has curated and produced an exhibition at the 12 Star Gallery in Europe House, London, entitled ‘“If Only You Could Be Here…”: Love Letters Across the Berlin Wall’.
The Berlin Wall divided East and West Germany for nearly 30 years until its fall in 1989. East and West Germany only had limited opportunities to visit each other, and even less for East and West Berliners. Families, friends and lovers were divided and many people tried to escape from East to West.
The exhibition features works by the Berlin art collective Tape That, and focuses on three special love stories between East and West Germans that took place in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Three couples fell in love during the German division. Their stories, of love that defied a time of isolation and separation, were kept alive through letters. Here, in this exhibition you will have the opportunity to see Germany’s Cold War history from a new and unexpected perspective. This is a story about devotion without borders, without walls, told in the words of the lovers themselves.
The exhibition is supported by the German Historical Institute of London and the Goethe-Institut in London, and was produced in partnership with the European Commission.
Nora’s research project is entitled ‘What is the Impact of Corporate Art Collectors on the West-European Contemporary Art Market (and its Art Production)?’, and is supervised by Dr Ben Thomas, Reader in the History of Art.
The 12 Star Gallery is open from 10am-6pm, Monday to Friday and is located at 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU. The exhibition runs until 31 October and will then move to the German Historical Institute London, where it can be visited between the 5th November and 5th December at 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ. The German Historical Institute is open Monday to Friday from 9.30am – 5pm and Thursdays from 9.30am – 8pm.
More details are available here: https://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/events/12-star-gallery_en
Images: Jamie Smith