DAS LETZTE (The Last)

Susan Donath and Juliane Uhl

The exhibition shows works by the Dresden-based artist Susan Donath and the Halle-based author Juliane Uhl.

Donath and Uhl thematize death in its multidimensionality and thus represent a new generation in dealing with death. The end of life is not only an administrative act or ritual site of old and new, but also the predetermined breaking point between history and the present, over which red threads can be spun. In the contemplation of life and existence down to the last lies the ability to look back and to make retrospective discoveries that allow enlightened glimpses into the future. In DAS LETZTE, death in its capacity as an eye opener, as a moment of clarity, becomes the most honest moment of existence.

Donath and Uhl unite the most diverse professional and also personal perspectives, which make their observations of death a space for interpretation for the entire society.

Juliane Uhl has worked in a crematorium for seven years and is editor-in-chief of the magazine DRUNTER&DRÜBER. She organizes DeathSlams and develops event concepts that bring death as a topic suitable for the masses into society. Uhl has been writing short texts and poems since her early youth. In 2015 she published her book Drei Liter Tod – Mein Leben im Krematorium. She offers herself to readers as an icebreaker for a topic that likes to remain unspoken or is elevated by experts to a task for professionals. Since May 2020 she has also been writing the column #lauterdenken on the website of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.

Juliane Uhl imagines death and looks at life from there. She gives lectures and readings, moderates events, publishes about death and freedom and develops artistic positions with words. Her works are questionings of the seemingly fixed, her way of thinking is one of constant doubt. In continuation of her examination of death, Uhl dedicated her year of freedom on 01.01.2020, which can only be real through the acceptance of death and has been questioned since the Corona crisis.

Susan Donath's works reflect different aspects of the culture of mourning and death: a German-Czech grave, an unburied urn with Stasi files, a memorial stone that has been set aside, funerary inscriptions made of iron beads and death crowns. Often the individual works are preceded by research into a practice, tradition, which is then often incorporated into an artistic work in a different constellation or combination. Susan Donath is currently working on a "model project" in the Bílina area of the Czech Republic and has developed an artistic concept for destroyed grave images. On site, her focus is on the systematic destruction of Jewish and German cemeteries after 1945 and the question of how to deal with the facilities in the future.