What continues
Clémentine Adou, Kevin Jerome Everson, Hemansingh Lutchmun
5 Apr–18 May 2025

Every year during the Christmas shopping period, two long-standing luxury department stores in Paris attempt to outdo each other with spectacular window displays. They stage elaborately designed scenes with animatronic puppets, providing a glimpse of capitalism dreaming. On a sugar cane plantation in Mauritius, workers tend to the extensive gardens surrounding a 19th-century colonial manor house. Owned to this day by the same family, the estate is now a popular tourist attraction. At an air force base in Columbus, Mississippi, a pilot in training undergoes a vertigo test. He performs various exercises while his body turns in circles, first slowly, then faster.

Terms like disruption, crisis and catastrophe are used to describe the present as a time of upheaval. In the face of deep ruptures, however, we can lose sight of the continuities that shape day-to-day experiences, through which institutions, social structures and power relations are stabilised and reproduced. The exhibition What Continues looks at continuities – at routines, workflows, habits and rituals. They are embedded in social orders that are furthermore reflected in visual relationships: in what ways are supposedly uninvolved observers entangled in violent continuities?

Image: Clémentine Adou, Xmas, 2019–24, Videostill, Courtesy the artist

Programme

Fri, 4 Apr, 7 pm
Opening Night with an Introduction by Heinrich Dietz

Wed, 9 Apr, 7 pm
Curator’s Tour with Heinrich Dietz

Mon, 14 Apr, 6 pm
Table talk
Criticising capitalism
with Gruppe Gesellschaftskritik Freiburg

Mon, 28 Apr, 6 pm
Table talk
Power structures
with Joanne Rodriguez

Mon, 5 May, 6 pm
Table talk
Being human
with Isabelle Ihring

Fri, 9 May, 7 pm
Presentation of the De/Coloniality Now initiative of the University of Freiburg with Ercüment Çelik, followed by an artist talk with Hemansingh Lutchmun

Sun, 11 May, 2–4 pm
Workshop for Children 6–12 years
(registration required)

Wed, 14 May, 7 pm
Guided Tour with Marilena Raufeisen