Noémi Barbaglia - “The Hallway”

• Exhibition

For her first institutional solo exhibition, Noémi Barbaglia has developed an expansive installation which deals with the special location of the Kunstverein in the transit momentum of the Harburg train station. With its glass entrance door and free admission, the Kunstverein appears to be a permeable and openly accessible space. Nevertheless, upon entering, invisible thresholds must be overcome. These define the specific set of rules within the institutional framework and thus separate the art venue from the everyday life that surrounds it. Michel Foucault coined the term heterotopia for such places, in which social relations are reflected, represented, dissolved or reversed. In her works, Barbaglia uses the veil as a central metaphor to address the inside and the outside, that lying before and that lying behind, as well as our own position in this structure of visible and invisible spaces. At the Kunstverein, Barbaglia weaves these ideas into a sculptural intervention in tension with the architecture of the space.