Añañuca
01.12.2020 – 14.03.2021
Julen Birke (born 1973 in Santiago de Chile, lives and works ibid.) is an active member of a new generation of sculptors within the Chilean art scene who have undertaken a decisive renewal of their practice since the mid-1990s. For her work, she chooses materials that come from the everyday world – and especially from the field of textiles. Her sculptures are objects made of fabric, cotton, plastic, and elastic bands, which are processed with a technique of cutting and assembly that gives them a familiar and at the same time fragile appearance.
The installation Añañuca was originally created in 2005 for the Gallery DKM at the inner harbor in Duisburg, embedded in the urban project Garden of Memories by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan. Julen Birke processed the historical, cultural, and visual information of the place and let the collective memory blossom in the guise of nature in the industrial park.
Year after year, a magnificent natural spectacle called Añañuca grows in the Chilean desert Atacama. Based on this event, the artist Julen Birke realized a site-specific installation. The pink-colored carpet of flowers in the form of 300 light bodies, which are connected to each other by a root system of transparent cables, illuminates the foyer of the Museum DKM. The installation Añañuca thus transforms the museum into a source of light that shines with a special luminosity into the outside.