As part of a three-day exhibition programme, artburst berlin e.V. presents artistic works across various media and perspectives on the theme of 'holiday'.

Moving between personal memory and social analysis, the works in this exhibition explore beach holidays and collective nostalgia, family histories and experiences of migration, the places of longing for past generations, and the non-places of globalised mobility. Here, the holiday appears both as a space of memory and as a canvas for projecting desires, identity, belonging and refuge. It becomes clear that travel is never solely an individual decision, but is directly linked to social and material factors. Who can afford a holiday? And what role do origin, nationality, class or gender play in the ability to move about freely? The exhibition invites visitors to question the often invisible prerequisites of leisure, as well as the fluid boundaries between productivity and regeneration, time out and obligation, and to view holidays as a mirror of our present and our society.

This is also the case with Anna Zachariades’installation Microdosing Eternity (2025, de. „Die Ewigkeit mikrodosieren”): Durchzogen von Mikroplastikpartikeln, die auf den ersten Blick wie bunte Streusel aussehen, wird ihre überdimensionierte Sandburg zum Sinnbild für die Fragilität eben jener paradiesischen Strände, die Gegenstand unserer Ferienträume sind. Die Gemälde Caught in a Landslide (2025) and Avalanche (2025), which allude to forest fires and melting glaciers, provide the framework for Zachariades’ exploration of the effects of man-made climate change on popular holiday destinations. Evelina Reiter sees holidays as a place of reunion, female solidarity and quiet moments of respite. Her three oil paintings Dinner um 7 (2024), All inclusive (2025) and Irina (2026) connect memory and the present, exploring family relationships and all-inclusive hotels, which serve as both a refuge and a canvas for social projection. In the two-channel work A 7-Minute and 5 Postcards (2018), Tingwei Li uses fictional postcards to question idealised notions of travel. By combining ‘found footage’ with fragments of literary texts, she presents holidays as a supposed respite within a society characterised by constant availability. Marta Djourina's installation Travel Light (2022–2023) consists of photographs and two aluminium casts of suitcases that have been repurposed as pinhole cameras for a flight. The work highlights airports as ‘non-places’ whilst also drawing attention to the working realities of artists, for whom travel is often an integral part of their professional practice. Alexandra Müller's sound object Churros (2026) replaces the expected sound of the sea from a seashell with the ambient sounds of Argentine beaches. The work alludes to the history of tourism in Buenos Aires and highlights that, to this day, holidays remain closely linked to issues of class, accessibility and environmental justice. Anıl Aydınoğlu works with compacted house dust that he collected whilst working as an Airbnb cleaner. The sculpture In the Air(bnb) (2025) unveils the often invisible labour behind tourist recreation and raises questions about social inequality and mobility. In the photographic series Naherholungsgebiete (2025, eng. 'Local recreation areas'), Alexander Schröder documents the post-Soviet recreational architecture of the former GDR. His photographs depict places caught between decay and survival and examine their current significance for holidaymakers as sites of remembrance and leisure. Heidi Scharen's installation Fenster I (2022, eng. 'Window I') also combines travel photographs from GDR family archives with her own memories of a post-Soviet journey. Through deliberate omissions, the work questions the construction of collective memory and reveals its political dimension. Finally, Sarah Estio's sculptural work gültiger Personalausweis (2026, eng. “Valid Identity Card”) explores freedom of movement, nationality and postcolonial power relations. The magic square used in the work highlights the arbitrariness of these borders and their colonial origins, which remain evident to this day.

Ergänzt wird die Ausstellung durch ein Programm aus Performance, Film-Screening, Kurator*innenführung und Workshop. 

With humour and glamour, Slaxy Lexy opens the exhibition at the vernissage with a drag performance. The artist combines entertainment with social commentary and is known, amongst other things, for her show Grindr Gold, in which she recounts stories from queer dating life. With their installation performance PICNIC , Kaya Leonie Pilsner and Marlen Hüllstrunk invite visitors to a communal banquet that focuses on encounter, exchange and hospitality. The shared experience itself becomes artistic material, allowing community to be experienced as a living practice. Max Wigger's film Dieses Eine Leben (2026, eng. “This One Life”) follows aqua fitness instructor Eu as he attempts to break free from the routines of a wellness resort. Set against a backdrop of a surreal time loop and hidden spaces, the film explores work, control and the longing for a life beyond prescribed systems.

„Dieses eine Leben“ – Max Wigger TRAILER