The Face and Its Contents

Description: The Face and Its Contents weaves together a historical fiction piece written by the artist with archival photographs and documents from the museum’s collection. The work explores the interplay of power, image-making, and historical silence. At its core is sculptor Georg Kolbe’s time in Istanbul (1916–1917), situated within the social milieu of the German Embassy during World War I. Tracing Kolbe’s commissions through personal correspondence, photographic fragments, and official records, the installation reconstructs his entanglements with colonial infrastructure, wartime propaganda, and the ideological aesthetics of empire-building. Emerging from these archival traces, the work interrogates the complicity of artistic production in structures of violence, raising questions of artistic agency while examining how bust-making obscures processes of erasure and genocide.

Image Description: Exhibition views, Tea and Dry Biscuits, Georg Kolbe Museum, 2025. Photo: Enric Duch.