Carrying

The starting point is the site where Museum Brandhorst, the Pinakothek der Moderne, and other institutions of the Kunstareal Munich are located today. This is where the Prinz-Arnulf-Kaserne, also called “Türkenkaserne” (Turks’ Barracks), once stood. The name of this military complex, built in 1826, refers back to prisoners of war who were brought from the Ottoman Empire to Bavaria for forced labor in the late seventeenth century. Such (hi)stories have become inscribed in place and street names such as “Türkenstraße” (Turks’ Street).

Which stories are told, who tells them, and how? These questions resonate particularly in places devoted to knowledge production and cultural mediation. The invited artists approach, from different perspectives, how history and memory become entangled with constructed narratives—and how they are carried forward through images, media, and monuments. Layers of exchange overlay the historical realities of violence, exploitation, and cultural dispossession—from the era of the so-called “Gastarbeiter” (guest workers) to today’s debates on territorial borders, migration, and belonging. These questions gain new urgency where war and culture are treated separately—obscuring how deeply they’re entwined.

“Carrying” understands the museum as a resonance chamber in which the institution interrogates its own history and identity, linking local topographies with global questions.