Grimmwelt Kassel and Weinberg-Terrassen

Grimmwelt Kassel and Weinberg-Terrassen, photo: Mathias Völzke

Having opened its doors to the public in September 2015, Grimmwelt is the latest addition to Kassel’s museum landscape: perched atop the so-called Weinberg, this museum devoted to the life, work, and times of the Brothers Grimm strikes a balance between both the popular appeal of folk and fairytale culture and the monumental scholarly achievement of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as lexicographers and linguists.

In its temporary exhibition space, an ensemble of documenta 14 projects invoke language and literature and conjure the tenebrous ambivalences of fairy tales and their dark moral fervor. Less comforting narrations about our world than parables about the basic architectures of repressive, patriarchal, malevolent society—a story the documenta 14 artists here seek to overturn—the artworks on view counter the emotional refuge that such tales supposedly offer with the dread they often carry within.

Close to Grimmwelt on the Weinberg-Terrassen overlooking the Südstadt of Kassel, Rebecca Belmore’s marble tent—arriving in Kassel after the closing of the exhibition in Athens, where it faced the Acropolis—finds a place alongside Nathan Pohio’s installation, which offers a complex gesture of welcome and hospitality.

Posted in Public Exhibition