Cemile Sahin: BB – BORN TO BLOOM

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Switzerland of the artist Cemile Sahin (b. 1990 in Wiesbaden, Germany, lives in Berlin). Cemile Sahin is a storyteller working across a range of media, including film, photography, literature, and installation. Her practice critically engages with issues of power structures, war, and violence. In her spatialised narrations, Sahin explores how media, politics, and warfare shape our understanding of history.

For the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, the artist has developed new spatial compositions that further her investigation into the intersection of nature and war. Sahin is interested in how nature becomes not only a field of armed conflict, but also a tool of military strategy—as a barrier, camouflage, resource, or a site of collective identity. The central work in the exhibition BB – BORN TO BLOOM, a multi-channel video installation, brings together Kurdish and Swiss landscapes. Both topographies are defined by striking mountain panoramas that carry symbolic meaning. On one side are the Swiss Alps, which serve as a postcard motif for the idea of “Swissness” promoted by tourism and, with their bunker réduit, also represented a central defence mechanism of the Swiss army. On the other side are the remote Kurdish mountain regions—an embodiment of the Kurdish resistance struggle and a symbol of long-awaited freedom. Both landscapes are politically connected: in 1923, the “Treaty of Lausanne” defined Turkey’s borders and undermined the territorial sovereignty of the Kurdish people. In her video work Gewehr im Schrank/Rifle in the closet (2023), Sahin explores how Lausanne has today become a key development site for military combat drones—and how romanticised Switzerland is, in fact, one of the most heavily armed countries in the world.

In BB – BORN TO BLOOM, two flowers come to symbolise these ambiguities: the geranium, which adorns balconies and gardens throughout the country as the “Swiss national flower”, and the Gula Xemgîn (English: Kaiser’s crown, or kurdish tulip), the “flower of freedom”, which, in Kurdish folklore, blooms only at high altitudes because that is the only place where it can truly be free. In this way, Sahin creates a fragile metaphor for the intersection of landscape and violence.

Sahin approaches complex themes through a pop-cultural aesthetic, combining fast-paced found-footage videos with pop slogans on large-format advertising media and fake flowers in epoxy resin. Her use of color, materials, and language references the logic of social media, creating immersive installations that draw us in through a flood of text and images. Literature is just as much a part of Sahin’s artistic practice as video and installation. She has received several awards for her three novels—TAXI (2019), ALLE HUNDE STERBEN (2020), and KOMMANDO AJAX (2024)—most recently the Erich Fried Prize 2025 in Austria, as well as a nomination for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2025.

Cemile Sahin (b. 1990, in Wiesbaden, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Solo exhibitions (selection): ROAD RUNNER, Esther Schipper, Berlin (2025); Gewehr im Schrank—Rifle in the closet, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany (2023). Group exhibitions and film festivals (selection): Sieh Dir die Menschen an!, Kunstsammlung Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany (2024); white sea olive groves, Malta Art Biennale, Valletta/ES (2024); Manifesto of Fragility: Biennale de Lyon 2022, Lyon Biennial, Lyon, France (2022); Identität nicht nachgewiesen, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany (2022).

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is supported by Stadt St.Gallen, Kulturförderung Kanton St.Gallen, Swisslos, Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung and Kulturförderung Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The educational programme is made possible by Raiffeisen.

The exhibition of Cemile Sahin is supported by philaneo. Special thanks to event ag, Grafitec AG, and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul. 

For further questions please contact Giovanni Carmine (carmine@k9000.ch) or Barbara Kiolbassa (kiolbassa@k9000.ch).