The third edition of HOT MESS – a group exhibition with Berlin-based artists curated by Yolandé Gouws and Vanja Žanko, with ceramics curated by Tegan Emerson – was hosted at Kühlhaus Berlin on 22 May 2022. It featured artworks by Alban Muja, Carla Chan, Katharina Trudzinski & Anna Mirkin, Lovro Artuković, Olafur Eliasson, Šejla Kamerić and Zinu Kim, among many others --->

The title of the exhibition series HOT MESS is a reference to the milestone book by Donna Haraway Staying with the Trouble, wherein Haraway defines the times we live in as sticky, hot compost piles that we humans have created. Haraway proposes that to solve this self-made mess, we need to delve deeper into it–to join in and make-kin, not only with human beings but with all creatures of this Earth; to follow threads of unexpected collaboration and work with what we have. 

"The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent responses to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. (...) Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings."

​​Deliberately local and climatically sensitive, HOT MESS specifically focuses on Berlin-based artists. Yet within this locality, the exhibition embraces a unique diversity inherent to the city itself. It invites artists both professionally and non-professionally trained, from within and outside academia, celebrated and uncelebrated, known and unknown. It encourages participants of all gender identities and ethnicities, and commits to be deliberately inclusive both in terms of representation and forms of expression. To foreground this intention, the PREVIEW of the show coincides with the World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development taking place on May 21 2022. 

As a non-institutional platform, HOT MESS aims to organically build partnerships across networks of independent artists, curators and organisations. It utilises intercultural dialogue as a means of future-building, celebrating the Berlin cultural sector as a speculative site for radical diversity, sustainability and conscious inclusivity.

To both formally and conceptually embody these multidisciplinary allegiances, the third edition of HOT MESS is co-curated by cultural manager and curator Vanja Žanko. Having in 2014 founded Nomad–a non-profit aimed to support Central and South European artists and art professionals–Žanko has since worked with major international artists, museums and governmental bodies to successfully format cross-disciplinary exhibitions and projects. Today Nomad operates out of Berlin, Zagreb and Vienna, and continues to help artists who have suffered the consequences of socio and geopolitical uncertainty. 

The selection of ceramics in the show has been curated by the Berlin-based ceramic artist Tegan Emerson.

HOT MESS was founded in 2020 by Yolandé Gouws as an initiative to promote sustainable long-term change. It was conceived at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in response to the anxious conditions suffered by the Berlin cultural sector at that time. The series imagines the city as a host of unlimited possibility, with each show realised in partnership with independent spaces also in varying stages of transition. The first event was staged in 2020 at the foreclosed club Prince Charles, with the second edition premiering at the Napoleon Komplex event space in the renovated ex-Deutsche Bahn carriage repair halls near Berlin Ostkreuz. 

The third edition of HOT MESS is organised in partnership with Kühlhaus Berlin. Once an ice factory, the red brick building is now in the process of being lovingly restored and has become the site of numerous interdisciplinary and cultural events. 

Don’t hesitate to let us know if you need any further information, as we would be delighted to start a dialogue with you.

Press opening: 20th May, 2pm

Preview - by invitation: 21 May, 11 am - 5 pm
Vernissage: 22nd May, 11am - 10pm