2014/2015

Uzaktan Mektuplar - Letters from Abroad,
four-channel video installation, HD, 16:9, 00:37:06

Maja Weyermann's video installation makes reference to the role Armenians played in carpet production and trade in Turkey before 1915, and interconnects this history with the expropriation of the immovable assets of Armenian foundations in Istanbul. The artist invites the viewers to confront the expropriation of material heritage and the obliteration of cultural heritage and depicts, in a very personal way, these two aspects of the Armenian genocide.

Exhibition:
2015 Uzaktan Mektuplar - Letters from Abroad, DEPO-Istanbul, Istanbul
Kindly supported by the Berlin Senate Cultural Affairs Department and 2015 Exhibition Program of DEPO is being realized in cooperation with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

2011/2012

about paradise,
video project: video about paradise I, video about paradise II, stills

The basis of the video works about paradise I and about paradise II are conversations with Iranian carpet traders in Hamburg. In these conversations, the central theme is the relationship between personal and cultural memory, shedding light on the connection between cultural memory and the construction of space.* The films about paradise I/II lead us associatively from the real situation of the carpet traders in Hamburg, by way of the carpet as a consumer good, to the ideas and emotions the carpets inspire in the traders as artefacts of cultural memory. The combination of 3D and video is constructed in such a way that the two cannot always be differentiated from one another. In this way, the overlapping of the visible and the invisible, of the abstract and the concrete and of memory and presence is made evident.
The project about paradise is kindly supported by SFB 586 Differenz und Integration of the Universities of Leipzig und Halle- Wittenberg, the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft and Institute for Anthropology of the Unversity of Leipzig.

* Space as the result of social relationships, arising from the acts of individuals or groups

Exhibitions:
2014 segues, Sanatorium, Istanbul
2012 Wahlverwandtschaften – Imaginationen des Nomadischen in der Gegenwartskunst, curated by Peter Herbstreuth, Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg.

2010

real-time-nomads,
multi media installation: 6 videoportaits, 6 soundscapes, stills, citywalk

real–time–nomads takes us on a journey along the cultural diversity of European big cities like Berlin, reflecting on the multi-dimensional spaces in which we move. The interdisciplinary project joins together an exhibition of photographic prints with a city walk that includes sound collages and video works.
Swiss artist Maja Weyermann has interviewed shopkeepers and food stand owners from different cultural backgrounds in Berlin and worked with them to reconstruct their memories of rooms and spaces from their childhoods in their countries of origin. The artist virtually simulated these reconstructed rooms in 3-D. The final installation weaves the different facets of the remembered rooms and the current workspaces of the interview partners into a dialogue with each other.

Installation

In the framework of the 4th European Month of Photography, Berlin, the exhibition took place on 9 venues in Berlin which were connected with a city walk. The citywalk was a special tour of Berlin, developed for real-time-nomads, which leaded visitors to the interview partner’s shops. In each shop, it was possible to watch a video portrait which combines Weyermann’s 3-D interpretations of the owner’s childhood rooms with views of the shop and text quoted from her interviews. The full citywalk experience was available during the exhibitions at three exhibition spaces in Berlin (see below). Audio was available via Call-in or on the website of real-time-nomads.
The project real-time-nomads is kindly supported by The European Cultural Foundation and LURI.watersystems.GmbH

Exhibitions:
2010 projectspace uqbar, n.b.k. and Collegium Hungaricum
2010 Warsaw, Festival The Knot

2006 - 2008

Chandigarh Project
16 Renderings, DVD: CHANDIGARH - an approach

Today, European architects are often hired to design cities in far-off parts of the world. This gives way to questions: what happens when architecture is exported from the society it is rooted in? How do "the other" change these spaces and how do these spaces change when we see them through the eyes of "the other"?

Interested in exploring the extent to which spacial perception is influenced by cultural conditions, the artist Maja Weyermann looked at Chandigarh, a city built by Le Corbusier for a northern Indian population 50 years ago. In spite of Le Corbusier's attempt to grasp Indian culture, the design he came up with was informed by very European concepts of space. The question is, does it work? How have the Punjabis used Le Corbusier's architecture: have they embraced it or has it been a misfit?

Maja Weyermann gives expression to her perception of what Chandigarh is today with her visual production of interior spaces that are rooted in the architectural language of European modernity and yet appear unfamiliar. She also explores the views about the city and its architecture through interviews with Indian architects, urban planners and inhabitants of Chandigarh.
The project Chandigarh is kindly supported by pro helvetia, New Delhi and ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)

Exhibitions:
2015 Seeing Chandigarh, Swiss Reports, Centre Le Corbusier, Museum Heidi Weber, Zürich
2012/13 Die Stadt, die es nicht gibt. Bilder globaler Räume, LudwigForum Aachen
2011 ਚੰਡੀਗੜ੍ਹ-Chandigarh, Fondation de l'Architecture et de l'Ingénierie, Luxembourg
2010 Carnet Indien II, Fondation Suisse/Pavillon Le Corbusier, Paris
2009 Carnet Indien I, Le Corbusierhaus, Berlin
2008 Chandigarh, Museum of Fine Arts, Chandigarh
Chandigarh- An Approach, India International Centre, New Delhi
Chandigarh, Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg

2003

Gare d’Orsay
multi media Installation: video loop Le point aveugle, soundscape gare d'orsay , 3 Renderings

Die Arbeiten der Schweizer Künstlerin Maja Weyermann umkreisen die Fragen nach den unterschiedlichen Ebenen räumlicher Wahrnehmung. In ihrer Ausstellung in der Galerie Koch und Kesslau bezieht sie sich auf den ehemaligen Pariser Bahnhof Gare d’Orsay, der 1900 gebaut, 1939 wieder stillgelegt wurde.

1962 nutzte der Filmregisseur Orson Welles das Gebäude für seinen Film The Trial (nach Der Prozess von Franz Kafka). Weyermann rekonstruiert eine Szene aus diesem Film und generiert daraus eine Projektion, die auf verschiedenen medialen Ebenen, Elemente räumlicher Darstellung und deren Wahrnehmung inszeniert. Der Loop wird im unteren Bereich der Ausstellung gezeigt.

Die Szene, auf die sich Weyermann in dem Film bezieht, spielt in einem Treppenhaus, dessen perspektivische Darstellung dem Zuschauer jegliches Gefühl der Orientierung nimmt. Ein weiteres Element der Ausstellung, ein computergeneriertes Bild dieses Treppenhauses plaziert die Künstlerin am Ende des Treppenaufgangs zum Büro der Galerie und verknüpft so den realen mit dem virtuellen Raum - die Perspektive im Bild doppelt sich mit der Betrachter-Perspektive.

1961 beschäftigte sich auch der Architekt Le Corbusier mit dem Gare d’Orsay und entwirft auf dessen Gelände ein Hotel, das nie realisiert wird. Ein letztes Bild in der Ausstellung zeigt ein Hotelzimmer dieser Anlage, das verschiedenen Entwürfe des Architekten aufnimmt. Das Bild beschreibt eine nie realisierte Möglichkeit und somit das Utopische als weitere Ebene im komplexen Prozess räumlicher Wahrnehmung.

Exhibition:
2003 Gare d'Orsay, gallery Koch and Kesslau, Berlin