The two artists from Belarus and Leipzig were guests at the Keramikkünstlerhaus in March and April as part of the Ceramic Artist Exchange Tandem programme.
In her installation “Borders and Restrictions. One More Brick.”, Rozalina Busel explores themes of loss, farewell, and new beginnings. At the heart of the work lies a comparison between changing one’s place of residence and funeral rituals, as well as the physical and symbolic boundaries associated with both.
The starting point of the installation is a personal childhood memory: as a child, the artist molded a small coffin from found clay for a large, bright green grasshopper. This realistic game involved not only a confrontation with the mortality of a living being, but also a moment of consolation – a feeling that became significant once again, years later, far from home and family.
Busel reinterprets symbols of funerals and mourning. She uses ceramic objects that simultaneously resemble coffins and bricks – the latter being a material that can provide protection but also create barriers. The brick-like coffins, arranged along the wall, symbolize uncertainty and a life in limbo – a condition particularly familiar to those uprooted by forced migration.
Some of the objects are adorned with plant motifs – applied using decals, both pre-designed and AI-generated. These evoke the aesthetics of greeting cards, yet serve as quiet emblems of loss, memory, and mourning.
Photos: Anna Katharina Rowedder, Jantje Almstedt
At the Keramikkünstlerhaus, Ruth Unger presents over 100 new masks from her ongoing series “One Mask. One Day.”, realized in ceramic for the first time. While the elliptical basic shape with three openings remains consistent, each mask is individually crafted – featuring applied objects, drawings, or imprints of everyday items. In their multitude, the masks form a visual archive that raises questions about identity, representation, and transformation.
Unger uses the face as both site and symbol – not as a fixed image of the self, but as a mutable surface onto which personal, societal, and cultural associations are layered. Her works shift between grotesque and delicate, between gesture and control, between humor and melancholy. Through this, she consciously destabilizes meaning and challenges familiar modes of seeing. What am I looking at? Who is this? And what does it mean when contours refuse to settle?
Each mask is both fragment and whole – part of a polyphonic, ever-expanding system in which the intimate, the fleeting, and the structural are continuously renegotiated.
Photos: Anna Katharina Rowedder, Jantje Almstedt
Ruth Unger developed a performance for the opening of the exhibition, which she also showed at KULToURNACHT 2025.
Photos: Anna Katharina Rowedder