Fremde Freunde

A project by studio mut.und.anmut in collaboration with the Museum Utopie und Alltag in Eisenhüttenstadt.

During the 2024/25 winter term, studio mut.und.anmut, in collaboration with the Museum Utopie und Alltag in Eisenhüttenstadt, curated the exhibition ‘Foreign Friends – International Friendship between Ideal and Reality’.

The exhibition sheds light on the tension between promises of solidarity and racism that came to the fore in everyday life in the GDR: imported luxury goods, toys, teaching materials, paintings and sculptures – and their visual codes – reveal not only complex processes of othering and social hierarchisation, but also appeals and concrete approaches to overcoming them.

Labour mobility and political emigration play just as significant a role as the experiences of Black people and people of colour in the GDR and during the period of transformation from 1990 to the present day.
The exhibition was curated by Andrea Wieloch – then director of the Museum Utopie und Alltag –, Dr Miriam Friz Trzeciak and Axel Drieschner. Our task was to develop the name, visual identity, accompanying media and scenography for this exhibition.

Scenography combines text, images (everything from drawings and photographs to moving images is possible) and objects to create a narrative within the space. We handled all stages of the design process: from conception through to design and production. The particular appeal lay in the fact that we were able to work with original objects. The museum houses one of the largest collections of everyday culture and art from the GDR. It is located in Eisenhüttenstadt, which was founded in 1950 as a socialist model city and is now regarded as the largest contiguous heritage site in Germany. The exhibition building is a listed nursery school dating from 1953.