2026-01-02 | Senzeni Marasela: in a group show at Bode Gallery in Berlin, Germany
Our fellow Senzeni Marasela is participating in a group exhibition, 'Material Tales: Gestures of Abstraction' at Bode Gallery in Berlin, Germany.
The exhibition tells tales of abstraction by allowing material, form, and gesture to speak. Bringing together works by Taqwa Ali, Kim Bartelt, Tonia Calderon, Elke Foltz, Naomi Lisiki, Senzeni Marasela, and Georgina Maxim, it assembles different stories and perspectives on abstract visual languages.
Abstract art, which emerged in the 1940s primarily in the USA and France from the search for a visual language that emphasizes the artistic act in itself, is now a firmly established part of artistic expression. Figurative depictions and painterly principles gave way to open image processes and immediate, individual expression. Without hierarchies of forms and approaches, the self‑experience of viewers became an integral part of the work.
Material Tales: Gestures of Abstraction presents an exclusively female constellation of such abstract positions of contemporary artists. At its core lies a material‑oriented exploration of abstract visual language. The works on view address themes of everyday experience and perception, as well as engagements with the transience of time and matter and with individual and collective spaces of memory relating to origin and belonging.
Photo: Installation view, Falling 14, 2017-2025, @ Bode Gallery.
You can see the exhibition until January 24.