Diadéo trésor

Diadéo trésor

2024, aerated concrete block, mortar, laurel plants, woven willow, soil; with commissions from Nour Sokhon and Saverio Cantoni & Nicole Angela Pearson, Talya Lubinsky, and DE NE DE. A temporary public art commission with Kunst im Stadtraum, 14.09.24-14.09.25, Berlin, Germany



Installed in Berlin Mitte, Diadéo trésor is a sculptural installation in public space. The work is anchored in a small architectural artefact from the former Wertheim department store on Leipziger Platz: an ancient-Greek-inspired carving of a stone head in a crown of laurels. It was found in the building’s ruins in 1956 and remains the only trace of the building held in the Stadtmuseum Berlin. This artefact is scaled-up into an amplified image, rendered in unprotected aerated concrete block, a sculptural wall fragment that will slowly deteriorate outdoors. It’s framed by an off-centre curve of laurel, amplifying the role of both the wreath and the laurel plant itself: continuing symbols of honorific memorial that date back to Greco-Roman traditions, still invoked in western European imaginaries of memory and power. 

A series of commissioned artist-led works of listening and gathering accompany the installation: sound works, walking tours, and workshops on the theme of landscape, memory, and power.

The installation was accompanied by a series of commissioned artist-led sonic works: two sound compositions that respond to the area’s attendant histories and sites by Saverio Cantoni & Nicole Angela Pearson and Nour Sokhon; and two workshops: What's in the bushes?, a workshop on GDR landscaping legacies, grounded in a walk along Leipziger Straße by Ukrainian art initiative DE NE DE; and The Catalogue of Laments (The scroll of How), a site-specific collective indexing exercise of counter-narratives along Leipziger Straße by artist Talya Lubinsky.