Carrying

Already in its title, Carrying points to how places carry certain (hi)stories. This exhibition project with its accompanying events activates various spaces inside and outside Museum Brandhorst: international artists occupy historically charged sites and transit zones of the museum as well as the public space of the city. Works by Hêlîn Alas, Cana Bilir-Meier, Louise Lawler, Kate Newby, Tiffany Sia, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Leyla Yenirce engage with the museum and explore the entanglement of military and cultural power.

The starting point is the site where Museum Brandhorst is located today, along with the Pinakothek der Moderne and other institutions of the Kunstareal Munich. This is where the Prinz-Arnulf-Kaserne, also called “Türkenkaserne” (Turks' Barracks), once stood. The name of this military complex, built in 1826, refers back to prisoners of war who were brought from the Ottoman Empire to Bavaria for forced labor in the late seventeenth century. Such (hi)stories have become inscribed in place and street names such as “Türkenstraße” (Turks' Street).

Which stories are told, who tells them, and how? These questions resonate particularly in places devoted to knowledge production and cultural mediation. The invited artists approach, from different perspectives, how history and memory become entangled with constructed narratives—and how they are carried forward through images, media, and monuments. Here, rumors, legends, and attributions overlay the realities of exchange as much as those of violence, exploitation, and cultural dispossession. These patterns persist to the present day—from the era of the “Gastarbeiter” (guest workers) to today's debates on territorial borders, migration, and belonging. Such questions gain new urgency in places where war and culture are treated as separate—obscuring how deeply they are entwined.

Artists from different generations form, at specific sites—such as Cy Twombly's Lepanto Room and the “Türkentor” (Turks' Gate)—a polyphonic constellation of fragmented storytelling: a questioning and overwriting of what has been silenced or preserved and passed on. Carrying understands the museum as a resonance chamber in which the institution negotiates its own history and identity, linking local topographies with global questions.

Curated by Franziska Linhardt

Cooperations with Blitz Club, Careteria, Patrik Thomas's Cinevan x Lothringer 13 Halle x Goethe-Institut, Munich International Film Festival, Habibi Kiosk, Istanbul Modern, Münchner Stadtmuseum, Museum Fünf Kontinente, Modern Art Collection in the Pinakothek der Moderne and further partners

The exhibition is supported by PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne e.V. / Allianz