with Leon Kahane, artist
and Mira Anneli Naß, art historian and jury member of EMOP Berlin 2025

The conceptual artist Leon Kahane focuses on the critical examination of forms of cultural and artistic representation of political developments from the recent past. He repeatedly draws attention to events and institutions in which historical upheavals and their contradictory negotiations become apparent. They reflect historical, political and economic issues that have not yet been negotiated but also include biographical aspects that he takes up and processes in his works. The starting point for Mira Anneli Naß's conversation with Leon Kahane is his body of work Les Drancéens (2021) and the accompanying film Pitchipoi (2019), which can be seen in the exhibition was zwischen uns steht (what stands between us). The focus is on the suburb of Drancy north-east of Paris and the forms of remembrance at this historical site, where a central collection and transit camp of the German Wehrmacht, the Cité de la Muette, was located between 1941 and 1944 – and Leon Kahane's approach to it. Today, Drancy is a suburb whose residents are very mixed. Different stories of the Shoah and colonialism come together in this place, where many people from the former French colonies live.