Spheres of Interest
ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

Between East and West: Reflections of the ifa Collection in Contemporary Artistic Practice

The ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen boasts a unique collection of nearly 24,000 works of contemporary art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. About half of them were acquired for the touring exhibitions the ifa has mounted all over the world for over five decades; the other half came from the collection of the East German Zentrum für Kunstausstellungen der DDR (ZfK), which was transferred to the ifa in 1991. The holdings include works by artists like Otto Dix, Hannah Höch, Rosemarie Trockel, Wolfgang Tillmans, Helga Paris, Joseph Beuys, and Nasan Tur; a research project studying the provenance of the works and the social and political circumstances and trends of the acquisitions was launched in 2022.

The collection’s distinctive structures and exhibition histories as well as the defining impact of the accession of the ZfK collection are the point of departure for a joint artistic and curatorial investigation. Curators Inka Gressel and Susanne Weiß invited the artists Isaac Chong Wai, Lizza May David, Wilhelm Klotzek, Ofri Lapid, Adrien Missika, and Gitte Villesen to engage with the archive, the collection, and strands of the ifa’s history. Spheres of Interest traces this research and accompanying exhibitions in the ifa Galleries Berlin and Stuttgart, and complements it with an illustrated worklist, writings by the curators and interviews with the contributing artists.

The publication is designed by Achim Reichert.