Rolf Nesch, Nadira Husain, and Ahmed Umar: Ingraining and Unfolding

The exhibition is dedicated to examining the multifaceted interconnections between notions of home, (post-)migration, cultural identity, and artistic practice. At its core are prints and reliefs by Rolf Nesch from the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart’s collection, works that have not been exhibited for nearly six decades. From 1960 until the mid-1980s, the City Gallery of Stuttgart—the predecessor of today’s Kunstmuseum Stuttgart—acquired ninety works by the artist, who was born in Oberesslingen, Germany.

Rather than being conceived as a retrospective, Nesch’s work is presented within a contemporary context: together with works by Nadira Husain and Ahmed Umar, it unfolds into an intergenerational dialogue on migration, national belonging, and cultural identity in the face of geopolitical and social upheaval. Despite their differing biographies and cultural backgrounds, the three artists are united by direct experiences of displacement and migration, which find expression in their artistic practices—particularly in their choice of materials, the sensuous treatment of surfaces, and their openness to experimental methods.

Ingraining and Unfolding illuminates the formal strategies developed by artists who navigate between multiple cultural worlds, revealing the visual languages and narrative patterns that arise from this space of transition. It explores how these elements are reinterpreted, recontextualized, and combined in new ways—and asks what role art plays in this dynamic: as a medium that not only mirrors identity within plural societies, but also actively participates in shaping it.

Rolf Nesch (1893–1975)
In 1933, shortly after the National Socialists seize power, Rolf Nesch immigrates to Norway for political reasons. Life in exile fundamentally transforms both his working methods and artistic themes: experiences of estrangement, the adaptation to new circumstances, and the profound impact of the Nordic landscape with its elemental natural forces find vivid expression in his work.

Nesch studies at the Dresden Art Academy and, in 1924, following a period of study with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Frauenkirch near Davos, begins experimenting with printmaking for the first time. Even before his immigration, he develops an innovative metal printing technique, soldering pieces of metal and perforated sheet onto the plates so they become part of the impression. In Norway, he continues to refine this process, creating relief-like material pictures in which surface and space coalesce into a groundbreaking plastic form.

His participation in documenta I (1955), II (1959), and III (1964), as well as in the 1962 Venice Biennale in the newly built Nordic Pavilion, highlights the international reception of his work. The pieces selected for the exhibition from the Kunstmuseum’s collection, complemented by loans from national and international lenders, convey the transmedial, cross-cultural scope of his oeuvre. Today, Nesch is regarded as one of Norway’s most important artists.

Nadira Husain (b. 1980)
Growing up in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s in a Franco-Basque-Indian family, Nadira Husain develops a visual language that reflects this multifaceted background: the Muslim-Indian heritage of her father, the French-Basque culture of her mother, and the experience of metropolitan life. Her works juxtapose comic figures, Mughal miniature painting, and Indo-Persian furniture in a dense, multilayered composition. Husain works across painting, sculpture, and installation, often incorporating textile printing techniques. Collage functions as a central strategy in her practice, allowing her to express transcultural experience in visual terms.

Husain approaches her work from the vantage point of a post-migrant second generation. A recurring motif is the French term bâtarde—consistently used by her in its feminine form—meaning “bastard” or “mongrel.” Originally a biological term, it has often been wielded as an instrument of racist exclusion or to label children born out of wedlock. Husain reclaims the word through a feminist lens, transforming it into a reconciliatory mantra that opens questions of self-definition, attribution, and decolonization. Her practice is rooted in the diversity of heterogeneous societies shaped by migration. At the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, she presents new works in dialogue with a wall painting created specifically for the exhibition.

Ahmed Umar (b. 1988)
Ahmed Umar grows up in Sudan in a traditional Sufi family of the upper class, which relocates to Mecca during his childhood. In 2008, the artist and LGBTQIA+ activist flees political persecution and seeks refuge in Norway, where he begins studying art. For the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, he creates 33 works from his ongoing series “Glowing Phalanges.“ The title refers to the phalanges—the finger bones that hold particular significance in Islamic prayer practice: during the recitation of praises and supplications, they serve as counting points and are believed to glow on the Day of Judgment. In this series, Umar works with glass for the first time. Thirty-two of the pieces are produced during a residency in Bergen, Norway, while the thirty-third, a textile work, is crafted in Cairo.

Umar conceives the series as a spiritual exploration of identity, faith, and resistance. It brings together Sudanese Sufism, with its elaborate prayer beads, and Saudi Wahhabism, a strictly conservative current of Islam in which the counting of finger bones follows a precise order: 15, 33, 99, and 1,000. Umar translates this religious act into the light-reflecting materiality of glass. Casts of his own hands reinterpret traditional prayer gestures, while symbols of his own design—reminiscent of Arabic calligraphy—mark his works. Umar’s art is presented in Germany for the first time.

Curator Eva-Marina Froitzheim
Research Assistant Antonia Rittgeroth