Category: exhibits

Starting on May 22, 2025, the Wiesbaden Kunsthaus will host the premiere of the ‘I will not be silent! Drawn Memories in Comics’ exhibition.

Guided tour of the exhibition ‘I will not remain silent! Drawn memory in comics’ with Jakob Hoffman, video by Patrick Bäuml and Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, May 23, 2025.

The exhibition, which runs from May 22 to June 13, showcases four internationally acclaimed, award-winning artists— Tobi Dahmen, Nora Krug, Birgit Weyhe and Hannah Brinkmann — who use graphic storytelling techniques to explore history. Following the success of ‘But I Live. Remembering the Holocaust’ exhibition hosted in 2023, the Kunsthaus continues to focus on its key theme of “Promoting Democracy through Memory Culture.” Curated by Jakob Hoffmann, this exhibition is presented on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

From left to right: Tobi Dahmen, Hannah Brinkmann, Birgit Weyhe and Nora Krug. Photos courtesy of Jakob Hoffmann.

‘I will not be silent!’ centers on life stories that remind us that the past is part of our present, highlighting the importance of democracy and exploring ways of sharing these stories through art. The show features original drawings, sketches, research materials, and interviews. Through the displayed work by the four artists, it demonstrates different aesthetic approaches to visual storytelling and illuminates the creation process of graphic narratives.

The comic art on display at the ‘I will not be Silent!’ exhibition. Photos courtesy of the Wiesbaden Kunstahaus.

Three of the featured artists— Tobi Dahmen, Birgit Weyhe, and Nora Krug—are collaborating with the SCVN project’s Iraq & Syria and Holocaust Research Clusters respectively. While the displayed work by Birgit Weyhe and Nora Krug has been created outside the project, Tobi Dahmen’s featured art has been directly inspired by this collaboration. Visitors will have a chance to see parts of his latest graphic novel titled Al-Faẓia’ – The Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons, to be published by Carlsen Verlag in 2026, telling the story of Syrian refugee Akram al-Saud, who survived imprisonment and torture under the totalitarian Assad regime in Syria.

From left to right: Tobi demonstrating the size of Akram’s cell, Birgit Weyhe and Nora Krug examining Tobi’s panels, and Tobi and Akram in conversation. Photos courtesy of Jakob Hoffmann.

Pages from the graphic novel, ‘Al-Faẓia – The Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons’, featured at the exhibit. Images by Tobi Dahmen.

The exhibition opened on May 21, 2025, in the presence of Monique Behr, director of the Kunsthaus, and Dr. Susanne Völker, managing director of Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain. During the opening event, the featured artists and witnesses, Ernst Grube and Akram, engaged in a panel discussion, which was moderated by the exhibition curator, Jakob Hoffmann.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Fund Frankfurt RheinMain, Democracy Lives in Wiesbaden, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. An accompanying program was developed in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Wiesbaden and other partners, and features readings, lectures, films, inclusive tours, and workshops for school classes.

For more detailed information about the exhibition, please visit the Wiesbaden Kunsthaus website here.

The ‘Landscape in Comics’ exhibition opens on May 21 in Galleria 5 in Oulu, Finland. It will be the first public presentation of Anneli Furmark’s original art from her untitled graphic novel created in collaboration with a survivor of the Srebrenica Genocide within the frame of the Yugoslav Wars Research Cluster. The exhibition focuses on the presence and place of landscape in graphic narratives.

Panels from Anneli Furmark’s upcoming graphic novel (photo credit: Anneli Furmark).

In comics, landscapes often play a secondary role by providing background to the main story. The ‘Landscapes in Comics’ exhibition challenges this convention by exploring the narrative potential of landscapes and their capacity to reveal hidden details and additional layers of meaning in graphic storytelling. In addition to landscape, the exhibition deals with themes such as time, temporality, perception, sensory perception, memory, scale, living conditions and ecosystems.

Furmark’s work is featured alongside artists Juliana Hyrri (Estonia) and Hanneriina Moisseinen (Finland). The exhibition hosted by Galleria 5 in Oulu, Finland is open from May 21 until June 16, 2025.

Thank you Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland, Grafia and Sortavala – Säätiö for supporting this exhibition.

For more detailed information on Galleria 5 website, please click here.

On Sunday, May 11, 2025, the exhibition ‘But I Live. Remembering the Holocaust’ opens at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial.

The exhibition, curated by Jakob Hoffmann and Barbara Yelin, features the process of co-creation and original artwork by artists Barbara Yelin, Miriam Libicki, and Gilad Seliktar produced for the graphic novel But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, edited by Dr. Charlotte Schallié and inspired by the narratives of Holocaust survivors Emmie Arbel, David Schaffer, and Nico and Rolf Kamp. Displaying original drawings, sketches, archival materials, and interviews with participants, the exhibition illuminates the process by which the book came into existence.

Pages from each of the graphic narratives in ‘But I Live’, from left to right: ‘A Kind of Resistance’ by Miriam Libicki, ‘Thirteen Secrets’ by Gilad Seliktar and ‘But I Live’ by Barbara Yelin.

After a successful three-year run and exhibiting at institutions such as the Stadtmuseum Erlangen, Dortmund schauraum comic + salon, Wiesbaden Kunsthaus, Ravensbrück Memorial, and Erica-Fuchs-Haus Museum in Schwarzenbach a.d. Saale, Germany, the Bergen-Belsen Memorial is now the sixth institution to host the exhibition. The location of the exhibition also has personal and historical significance, as Emmie Arbel survived the concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen when she was just a little girl.

With the publication of Barbara Yelin’s graphic novel Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory, more of Emmie’s story has since been shared. In response to its arrival, the exhibition has been expanded to include new original materials.

Exhibitions only come to life through collaborative team efforts. Thank you to Barbara Yelin and Jakob Hoffmann for their leadership, their creative vision, and dedication, and thank you to Dr. Akim Jah and the educational team at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial for making this exhibition possible.

‘But I Live. Remembering the Holocaust’ will be hosted by Bergen-Belsen Memorial from May 11 until June 30, 2025.

Find out more information about the exhibition here:
https://www.stiftung-ng.de/de/news/news-detailseite/news/detail/News/gedenkstaette-bergen-belsen-zeigt-sonderausstellung-aber-ich-lebe-den-holocaust-erinnern/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAadctYOe5oyQyh6DRHmHr5i0_75_xXxiv0FdRj8acON0klqv5c6U3OfUU6ZMbw_aem_QKaWyIBb1TYMMkqxuDXXHA

As part of our Yugoslav Wars Research Cluster, Swiss comics artist Jared Muralt has been collaborating with a Roma woman, Ružica (not her real name), retelling her life in Serbia in the 1990s where the discrimination and violence of the Yugoslav Wars shaped Ružica’s childhood.

The concept drawings and character sketches for the graphic novel project “Ružica’s Last Summer” were recently showcased at the Berner Design Foundation’s annual BESTFORM exhibition from March 28 to April 27, 2025. This event represents the first public showing of Jared’s work on the project.

The Berner Design Foundation supports professional designers from the fields of graphic and product design, ceramics, fashion and textile design as well as scenography, while managing the Canton of Bern’s collection of applied arts.

In addition to hosting Jared’s work, the Berner Design Foundation has generously supported Jared’s graphic novel through additional funding. We gratefully acknowledge their contribution to our project, and their support in expanding the graphic narrative to bring Ružica’s story to life.

Photo and image credit: Jared Muralt, May 2025.