Uploaded November 2017 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Video by BAL Productions for Berlin Art Link Magazine
"Emptying flags" by artist Sonja Hornung, which will run over a period of several months.
Public space plays a central role in this exhibition project, insofar as the artist uses her work to bring into focus concepts of statehood and the significance of territorial spaces. Using installation and public intervention, Sonja Hornung attempts to approach a representation of a borderless political space. In the process, the artist annexes used and unused flagpoles within the city, hoisting flags that have no meaning whatsoever.
Ordinarily, flags carry cultural, religious, ethnic or ideological messages. Loaded with historical and geographical significance, they are symbols of domination and power, predetermining identity, including some and excluding others. The symbolism of flags is part and parcel of a system of order that influences, at any given moment, each and every individual.
The public part of the project will be followed in early 2014 with an exhibition including photographs, drawings and the flags themselves.
Sonja Hornung (*1987) is a Melbourne-born artist with an installation-based practice who uses public space to redefine the relation between humans and their environment. A recipient of the Melbourne National Scholarship, she graduated from her Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne with first class Honours. Currently, Sonja Hornung lives and works in Berlin, where she is studying for her Masters in Spatial Strategies at the Art Academy Weißensee. Her work has previously been shown in Berlin in two public projects in collaboration with General Public and the International Forum (Berliner Festspiele) respectively.
Partners of "Emptying Flags":
Senatsverwaltung für Inneres, Berlin; Fahnen Weissbach; Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin; BBraun; Berlin Art Link
Produced by Anna Russ
Filmed and edited by Natasha Klimenko
Video by BAL Productions for Berlin Art Link Magazine
"Emptying flags" by artist Sonja Hornung, which will run over a period of several months.
Public space plays a central role in this exhibition project, insofar as the artist uses her work to bring into focus concepts of statehood and the significance of territorial spaces. Using installation and public intervention, Sonja Hornung attempts to approach a representation of a borderless political space. In the process, the artist annexes used and unused flagpoles within the city, hoisting flags that have no meaning whatsoever.
Ordinarily, flags carry cultural, religious, ethnic or ideological messages. Loaded with historical and geographical significance, they are symbols of domination and power, predetermining identity, including some and excluding others. The symbolism of flags is part and parcel of a system of order that influences, at any given moment, each and every individual.
The public part of the project will be followed in early 2014 with an exhibition including photographs, drawings and the flags themselves.
Sonja Hornung (*1987) is a Melbourne-born artist with an installation-based practice who uses public space to redefine the relation between humans and their environment. A recipient of the Melbourne National Scholarship, she graduated from her Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne with first class Honours. Currently, Sonja Hornung lives and works in Berlin, where she is studying for her Masters in Spatial Strategies at the Art Academy Weißensee. Her work has previously been shown in Berlin in two public projects in collaboration with General Public and the International Forum (Berliner Festspiele) respectively.
Partners of "Emptying Flags":
Senatsverwaltung für Inneres, Berlin; Fahnen Weissbach; Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin; BBraun; Berlin Art Link
Produced by Anna Russ
Filmed and edited by Natasha Klimenko
