Catalog for the exhibition in the Nikolaikirche Berlin.

Languages: German English.

description

A peaceful Europe without borders cannot be taken for granted. Mia Florentine Weiss (born 1980 in Würzburg; lives and works in Berlin) deals in her conceptual art with questions about community, cultural identity and the future of Europe. On the 100th anniversary of the Versailles Treaty and the end of the First World War, Weiss transformed the main nave of the Nikolaikirche in Berlin with an expansive installation into an oversized, accessible steel cross that was laid from the vertical to the horizontal: a universal cross roads.

In addition to the cross placed in the former church, the artist brings earth from the 47 member states of the Council of Europe into the exhibition space. To do this, she toured the continent for two years. Weiss mixed the earth collected on her travels to form a soil that has long since overcome its limits. Turned into bricks, the series produced stones form a further foundation for their examination of the identity of Europe. The artist documented the act of collecting and meeting the local people on film.

The KREUZ WEG catalog accompanying the exhibition traces this long-term project with its stages and facets. With support from the Minister of State for Digitization Dorothee Bär and Berlin's Senator for Culture and Europe Klaus Lederer, a foreword by the curator Paul Spies and texts by Karlheinz Lüdeking, Sylvia Metz and Bettina Ruhrberg.