Residential Complex
The Minsk Kunsthaus in Potsdam will present the exhibition "Wohnkomplex: Art and Life in the Prefabricated Housing" in fall 2025. Guest curator Kito Nedo will explore the question of how East German prefabricated housing estates are negotiated in art.
Wohnkomplex will feature around 50 works by artists such as Karl-Heinz Adler, Sibylle Bergemann, Kurt Dornis, Markus Draper, Seiichi Furuya, Peter Herrmann, Sebastian Jung, Gisela Kurkhaus-Müller, Harald Metzkes, Sabine Moritz, Henrike Naumann, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Manfred Pernice, Uwe Pfeifer, Sonya Schönberger, Nathalie Valeska Schüler, Wenke Seemann, Robert Seidel, Christian Thoelke, Stephen Willats, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, and others. Installations, paintings, drawings, photographs, and films created since the 1970s are presented. Kito Nedo brings together works in this exhibition that examine and classify the prefabricated housing complex from different perspectives – as a place of housing, as a symbol of social utopias, and as a projection surface for social change. The prefabricated housing complex is not only at the center of the exhibition as an architectural legacy, but also as a cultural resonance space that raises questions of belonging, community, and memory. The exhibition interweaves artistic works with sociopolitical issues and reflects on how urban spaces impact life plans and social structures.
The housing complex opens up new perspectives on a model of construction and living that continues to resonate today. Originally, the prefabricated housing complex was the heart of GDR social policy, a place of socialization, and a symbol of real socialist progress – until 1990. After the end of the GDR, it became the scene of painful transformations and a symbol of social decline and racist violence. As modern ruins, the buildings awaited demolition, were renovated, or converted. The prefabricated building never became a monument, but remained a living presence. It is a GDR memorial site where living continues.
The catalogue "Wohnkomplex – Kunst und Leben im Plattenbau" (Residential Complex – Art and Life in the Prefabricated Building) is published by Distanz Verlag in German and English to accompany the exhibition. It not only presents the works from the exhibition at MINSK, but also provides a reappraisal of this chapter in the history of art history and architecture. In addition to texts by Kito Nedo
and Kevin Hanschke, the catalogue includes guest contributions on the interplay between art and prefabricated buildings: a literary essay by the author Grit Lemke, a cultural-historical analysis of GDR prefabricated building photography by cultural historian Prof. Bernd Lindner, a glossary of essential terms related to the "Platte" complex by art historian Juliane Richter, and a chronicle of the development of prefabricated building architecture and the artistic internal and external perspectives on this field by the architect Philipp Meuser. Release date: September 5, 2025.