About this event
From 13.09.26 to 26.09.26, the Fischhaus-Zittau presents artist Mona Könen from Berlin Schöneberg with her series "Fish from the GDR".
Sometimes heritage conservation doesn't begin with a register, but with a spade—in the unsuspected burial sites of entire imaginary worlds, suddenly revealed in everyday objects in which they became manifest and visible.
Under a garden, between roots, between layers of decay and forgetting, they appeared! Fish tins! GDR fish tins.
No monuments, no inscriptions—and yet bearers of a highly qualified visual language. Graphic miniatures, designed as decoration and likewise as optical garnishes for quick consumption, now unearthed like incidental testimonies to an everyday culture that hardly ever saw itself as worth preserving. The artist has collected 165 different motifs. Mona Könen lifts these motifs from the history-laden soil of a lost country, fixes them in plaster, and preserves the moment between use and memory. Thus, canned goods become finds, packaging becomes pictures and fantasy worlds—even worlds of longing—trash becomes material, and one's own garden becomes an excavation site.
On the Day of the Open Monument, these small, silent relics come to light and remind us that they were recovered as waste and end as an exhibition and rebirth where they were once naturally located in the former GDR: in the fish shop.
Test for yourself how much memory can be packed into a fish tin. Motifs that didn't even make it into a “Delikatladen” back then are also on display.
The oldest expiration date stamped into the lid of a fish tin, from 1970, points to their production in the 1960s; the most recent motif dates from 1990.
On Sunday, September 13th, and Saturday, September 19th, workshops for children with Micheline Richau, Berlin will take place as part of the exhibition. Participation is free and open to everyone. Adults, too.
