The Unloved Ones
Daniel Lie
Speaking to Ancestors 4/7
13.05 to 10.06.2023
Zwingli-Kirche
Personal memories, as well as cultural objects and products of nature that endure in the world for a long time, form the core of Daniel Lie‘s artistic practice. More recently, forms of mourning and commemoration have been added, as well as processes of collective healing. In the interdisciplinary exchange between ecology, archaeology and ancestor worship, their work questions Western science and religion and the binary thought structures imposed by them.
With the expansive installation The Unloved Ones, Lie responds to the architecture and history of the Zwingli Church in Berlin, Friedrichshain, as part of the exhibition series Speaking to Ancestors. Founded in 1908, the church has undergone many transformations since the division and reunification of Berlin, from usage of temporary archives to youth clubs. Today, it functions as a social space where culture, neighborhood and care is practiced, as well as a church where religious services and church festivities take place. These multifaceted connotations become reference points for the artistic reflection on political power structures and beliefs that can be found in sacred as well as profane spaces.
The Unloved Ones consists of sculptural units of turmeric-dyed fabrics recycled from Lie‘s previous work, Grieving Secret Society (2022, Carnegie Museum of Art). The works float above the pews on a centered level. This kind of recycling is an ongoing interac-tion in which Lie connects spaces and forms of mourning and remembering.
Inspired by the Bronze Age offering well Lie encountered while researching indigenous rituals in Berlin, they explored healing and intoxicating pre-Christian rituals. The textile sculptures, sewn in various forms and some-times filled with earth and medicinal herbs, contrast the rigidity of the altar and the patriarchal figures of the neo-Gothic church with their fluid, plural forms. The Unloved Ones is a choreography of abstract groups of figures far from pictorial representations from forgotten myths and marginalized religions that were forgotten, repressed, and politically mystified (or misused) with the advent of Christianity.
By making visible materials that are always in transformation, conditioned by their per-formative properties - time, transience, and presence - Lie‘s works underscore the inti-mate yet expansive coexistence of beings, and address our ongoing participation in the processes of living, dying, and decaying. The energy of these transformations unfolds through the scent of herbs, the smell of earth, and the changing natural color of turmeric when exposed to light. In this inter-play, visitors and users of the Zwingli Church are invited to become part of the installation in which different entities and „The Unloved Ones“ co-exist.
The Unloved Ones by Dan Lie takes place as part of the exhibition series Speaking to Ancestors curated by Pauline Doutreluingne and Keumhwa Kim. The two-year exhibition series, Speaking to Ancestors, brings together seven artistic positions that deal with the search for ge-nealogies, origins and ritual (image) practi-ces. The invited artists have in common that they develop their own narration about their ancestors, starting from ceremonial, ritual traditions or based on intimate, familial sto-ries. They create a new symbolic and social field of action situated between faded myths and handed-down imagination. They strive to heal societal wounds, resurrect forgotten histories of marginalized groups, and coun-ter patriarchal, colonial power structures through ancestral and magical ritual powers. Speaking to Ancestors explores how our global society responds to ancestor worship, shamanism, animism and myth.
Co-curated with Pauline Doutreluingne
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