"Rotelinie" Opens at Städtische Galerie Dresden

Each year in Dresden, as part of the Deutschlandstipendium initiative, the Hegenbarth scholarships are awarded to two students in the Meisterschüler program at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. On January 23rd, the Städtische Galerie Dresden opened Rotelinie ("Red Lines"), a joint showcase by this year’s Hegenbarth Scholars, Si Cheng and Gleb Konkin-von Serebrowski.

This year’s showcase opened with speeches from the gallery’s director, curator, and sponsors, who reflected on the scholarship’s history and introduced the artists. Speeches discussed the artists’ creative processes, their inspirations, and the works’ relevance to current issues, after which a local choir, sponsored by the DBJW, performed traditional Lithuanian folk music. Guests then headed up to the showcase in the Neue Galerie’s Project Space, where the choir intermittently performed traditional Ukrainian and Lithuanian music. Representatives from the DBJW, including its chairman Thomas von Lupke, and Anna Behrens, the head of the German-Baltic Youth Exchange Network, were in attendance at the vernissage, where they helped to represent their organisations to gallery officials and audience members alike.

The event concluded with a reception in the Galerie’s foyer, where conversation and reflection continued over drinks. Between discussions, the choir gave several more performances, as guests mingled with faculty staff and curators, and the artists discussed their work.

A Look into the Showcase: The 2024 Hegenbarth Scholars

Born in 1994 in Xinjiang, Si Cheng first trained in visual communication in Xiamen before moving to Germany in 2016 and enrolling at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 2018. Her work combines foam, paper, and thread into finely-sewn structures, often focused on organic motifs and biological elements, to address the aesthetics of ephemerality, decay, and memory, and question the importance thereof in society. On the right side of the room, her work "Rebirth" hangs from the ceiling, glowing softly and swaying as audience members walk by. Nearby, two wall-mounted works take a closer look at a universal human experience - how a child discovers the world by putting a hand up to the light of the sun, watching how light exposes the blood vessels within. Fine red threads run through the foam of the installations, mimicking blood vessels, and electric light quietly shines through the foam and paper structures, illuminating the room. Red ropes also stretch across the ceiling and walls, connecting elements of the exhibition, reinforcing the idea of unseen bonds running across time and space.

Born in 1997 in St. Petersburg, Gleb Konkin-von Serebrowski first trained as a forensic archaeologist in 2008 before moving to Germany and enrolling at the Academy in 2016. His archaeological training is a recurrent theme throughout his work; his installation, “Was essen wir heute zum Abendbrot?” works with found historical objects to explore themes of collective and personal trauma. On the near side of the room, a table is set with fragmented kitchenware recovered from the 1945 bombing of Dresden. Impacts from shelling mirror matching cut-outs in the table’s surface, emphasizing the void left by the items’ destruction. Nearby, a mural displays more objects recovered from the rubble of World War II: the remains of commonplace household items, including kitchenware, cutlery, and cooking utensils, salvaged from scrap heaps, are carefully arranged under a spotlight.

Red Lines: Threading Memory Through Art

Both artists explore the processes or experiences that interlink us as both individuals and members of society, especially the importance of memory, and the simultaneous transience and fragility of life.

“Rebirth” examines this theme through a recurrent motif in Si Cheng’s work - the life cycle of an octopus, an animal whose civilisation is marked by its inability to transmit generational memory. The octopus, being incredibly intelligent, is the animal considered to have the highest potential to form a civilisation. However, its reproductive process, during which both parents die, means that each generation of children is born without any form of memory or society. Born in isolation, they fend for themselves and die upon mating, repeating this life cycle ad infinitam. The void left by this lack of generational memory, the permanence of disappearance without memory as a form of endurance against time, and the fragility and loneliness of an existence without context, are constantly referred to in her central work. Having no shared history through which to transmit stories, octopi’s lives are markedly transient despite their intelligence, with no possibility for memory of those who pass away. The viewer is invited to reflect on the fragility and ephemerality of this life cycle through the installation, which sways as audience members walk by, and pulses with electric light. In doing so, they are also forced to reflect on the ephemerality of human life, and the role that memory and transience play in their personal narratives: the work invites a painful awareness of the loneliness of existence without memory or community. The rest of Cheng’s installation, and the contemplation of common human experiences, works to reaffirm that humankind has ties that bind it together and shares common experiences, such as discovering the world in childhood. As such, it becomes a quiet, subtle commentary on the importance of community and the invisible ties that connect us.

“Was essen wir heute zum Abendbrot?”, on the other hand, is not just a reflection on intergenerational memory, but also a bitter reckoning with Dresden’s own past, and a broader reflection on civilian suffering in war, and how civilian survivors of war carry its trauma even after conflict ends - in both the past and present. It confronts the viewer with the void that conflict and trauma leave in their wake, creating permanent holes in the fabric of daily living. The banality of the recovered objects contrasts with the deliberate way that they are arranged, and the way that they are highlighted by spotlights in the Project Space; the viewer’s innate familiarity with household objects, and identification with these, is contrasted with their state of decay and destruction. Suddenly, the viewer is conscious that these objects were once owned and used, and become aware of the fragility, and potential precariousness, of their own daily lives. These once-mundane items now serve as silent witnesses to loss, forcing the viewer to consider the everyday lives disrupted by war. As viewers walk by, the ghosts at the table walk amongst them, juxtaposing past and present.

As such, in exploring what happens when we turn attention to a common thing that others may overlook, both artists highlight the fragility of life and the importance of memory. The viewer is invited to see through the eyes of the past, or the eyes of a child, and then come back to their own world to reflect. The exhibition’s title, Rotelinie, carries layered significance. These eponymous red lines refer to more than the physical red lines in the space. They are the links between us, our ghosts, and the history that ties us to them - in short, the thread that constitutes collective memory. In China, red lines, or red threads, commonly symbolise fate. In certain regions, red threads can also symbolise familial connections and ancestral ties. Cheng’s “Rebirth” comments on these connections through cycles of renewal and loss, or as the physical presences of red threads depicting blood vessels throughout her work. Meanwhile, Konkin-von Serebrowski’s work anchors itself in historical trauma and its lingering presence, reflecting on “red lines” as the humanitarian lines that are crossed when trauma is inflicted, and the scars that are left in its wake.

The red line represents, in turn, the lifeblood that feeds children as they grow, the invisible ties of fate that connect individuals and communities, the red lines that humanity cannot afford to cross, and the scars left when it does.

The DBJW’s Role: Folk Music and its Importance in Collective Memory

The traditional choir sponsored by the DBJW played a central role in reinforcing these themes. Folk songs, passed down through generations, serve as a living repository of history, carrying collective memory through melody and tradition - something often exemplified in DBJW’s events, such as in Riga, which help showcase traditional Latvian music and dance. Choir members, some of them Ukrainian refugees, pointed out that collective singing is a powerful way through which a community processes its own history and memory, including its trauma, and heals therefrom: it is an act that unites and brings together individuals into a collective, and a powerful tool for healing. The juxtaposition of the exhibited works, their messages, and the choir’s presence not only superimposed themes of loss and healing, but also of past and present. The traditional Ukrainian music was also a stark reminder of the current relevance of the exhibition’s themes.

Art, at its core, is about attention and what we choose to give a stage to—art challenges us to pay attention, whether to history, to our experiences, or to the forces shaping our world. Rotelinie invites visitors to consider what connects us, how we remember, and what we pass down across generations. It asks: What happens when memory is lost, or we are unable to learn from it? How do we preserve what connects rather than divides us?

In doing so, it invites us to take responsibility for the memory we inherit, and how we use it to shape the decision that we make. Because, as we carry on patterns and memories, we also carry within us the ability to shape the future. That is, as both artists remind us, so long as we can learn from the past and remember the lines that connect us.

Nothing is set in stone - neither our stories nor our decisions. And unlike the subjects of the artworks on display, we have the opportunity to learn from the past and create a different future, in which we consciously pass on what connects rather than divides, what strengthens rather than weakens.

Rotelinie runs until March 23, 2025, at the Städtische Galerie Dresden. On February 27, an Artists' Talk will provide further insights into the exhibition and creative process.