SÜDSTELLIUM
20.04.2021-20.05.2021, Berlin. Artistic intervention on billboards at U1 Kottbusser Tor subway station (Kreuzberg - Berlin)
20.04.2021-20.05.2021, Berlin. Artistic intervention on billboards at U1 Kottbusser Tor subway station (Kreuzberg - Berlin)
The Südstellium project was selected by the Project Funding Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 2020-21 and supported by the cultural and artistic state funding of the city of Berlin.
For Galery Weekend Berlin, three Berlin-based Brazilian artists occupied billboards in the U1 subway in collaboration with artists in Brazil.
With SÜDSTELLIUM, the artists Ana Hupe, Barbara Marcel and Matheus Rocha Pitta initiated an exciting cooperation with Brazil and opened up Berlin's urban space for an unusual artistic intervention. The exhibition project Südstellium included artistic interventions on three subway boards located at the U1 Kottbusser Tor subway station and started at Gallery Weekend Berlin. Berlin-based artists Ana Hupe, Barbara Marcel and Matheus Rocha Pitta rented the platform boards for 20 days to deliver messages from the skies of the global south that are not so evident from Berlin. A stellium is a collection of stars or celestial bodies; the term southern stellium is an invention that uses terms from astronomy, astrology, and geopolitics. As a poetic invention, SÜDSTELLIUM is a forward-looking rather than a descriptive term: when we look up at the sky, we project our earthly concerns onto it, for example, by attributing figures as constellations.
![April 2021, SÜDSTELLIUM. View of the billboard VULTURE by Barbara Marcel and Vandria Borari at subway station Kottbusser Tor. © Barbara Marcel](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e4b47614cbba4ba07a92fe0f62939053f6320ad584d76398c3c6a6fc1d70953b/IMG_0225-f.jpg)
The collaborations proposed by SÜDSTELLIUM reveal, through art, pieces of the current situation of remote territories. The idea of how the first image of the black hole was achieved in April 2019 guided the concept of these artistic dialogues. Six astronomical observatories, each located in a different country, were aligned and took a picture each of a frame of the black hole. Hundreds of terabytes were generated and brought in HDs to a lab in Germany, where the pieces were bonded together to form a whole picture of this cosmological phenomenon. The mysterious object described by Einstein in 1916 was made accessible for the first time to our eyes. Until then, it only existed on a theoretical plane. Given its distance from the Earth, it would be necessary to capture its image with a lens of the same diameter as our planet. However, through an orchestration of seven telescopes around the globe, an image of its evidence was finally possible. This discovery is taken by SÜDSTELLIUM as a paradigma of the power of collaboration and producing alliances. We all look at the same sky, of course using different lenses, but still we have something that unites us all, possibly common horizons.
Click here to read the article about the project in the German newspaper taz - die Tageszeitung.
![April 2021, SÜDSTELLIUM. View of the billboard VULTURE by Barbara Marcel and Vandria Borari at subway station Kottbusser Tor. © Barbara Marcel](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3820af6a76da397b9b9a18bb3ebdb60fc07c263379ad8b7c1370343760700d08/Vulture_BarbaraMarcel_VandriaBorari_SubwayKottbusserTor_documentation.jpg)
![The artists Vândria Borari and Barbara Marcel ask themselves how it is possible to imagine the sky of Alter do Chão from the city of Berlin. What if to see the fallen skies of the Amazon one had to look at the soil, look at the clay and ceramics found on the shores of the Tapajós River? On a visit to the Berlin Ethnographic Museum in 2019, at the invitation of the artist Barbara Marcel, the also artist, lawyer and indigenous activist Vândria Borari had for the first time contact with the collection of pre-Columbian art located in Berlin. Amidst the museum's large collection of South Amerindian pieces, Vândria encountered Tapajonic vases, amulets and ceramic fragments, material culture of her ancestors. The collage resulting from the dialogues between the two artists brings together one of the vases from Berlin's collection; drawings by German-Brazilian ethnologist Curt Niemuendajú of one of the oldest cave paintings in the Amazon, located at the archeological site of Monte Alegre, Pará; and a photograph by Barbara Marcel of vultures sunbathing on Carauarí beach in Alter do Chão. According to Tapajonic cosmology, vultures are animals capable of connecting the immanent world with the transcendental realm. Regarded as funerary agents in various cultures around the world, they continue to be important interspecies caretakers in the ecological balance of the Amazon biomes, as well as sacred animals for the Borari indigenous people. In the Tapajonic ceramic vase acquired by the Berlin Museum in 1932 by the museum's former director, art historian Erich Wiese, we see female figures of caryatid women supporting the base of the vase and vultures on top of the piece. The collaborative project between Vândria Borari and Barbara Marcel is part of a long-term project on Tapajonic ceramics in European museums and a film to come under the title of Caryatides. © Barbara Marcel and Vândria Borari](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/15daf524758ac869d8c2f7021c45b6ced80c79273f81b129f15617d98ab2ef54/BM-2021---VULTURE.jpg)
![2021. Detail of VULTURE, by Barbara Marcel and Vandria Borari. © Barbara Marcel](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d5d48d3612b5ecf224d6b9aa3fe94cb602298d1642369df1b0f549c86c27042a/BM-2021---Vulture-detail.jpg)
![2021. Detail of VULTURE, by Barbara Marcel and Vandria Borari. © Barbara Marcel](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3ffb281327078718a23c0dfb8cb8f23d080744b7b8ca59631fb4fca44fc21b42/BM-2021---Vulture-detail-2.jpg)
![April 2021, SÜDSTELLIUM. View of the billboard VULTURE by Barbara Marcel and Vandria Borari at subway station Kottbusser Tor. © Barbara Marcel](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fef007733a4017243782ab3f0849b4a771640ebfe1a35dc6f7044bc058de70f1/IMG_9491-f.jpg)
![April 2021, SÜDSTELLIUM. View of the billboard VULTURE by Barbara Marcel and Vandria Borari at subway station Kottbusser Tor. © Barbara Marcel](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ec9d476d61dc8712bdda48471df0de3ef575a845ca1b7b4b7e2086dc28a586b3/IMG_9513-f.jpg)
![April 2021, SÜDSTELLIUM. View of the billboard by Ana Hupe, Maria de Lourdes da Silva, Amanda Caroline Martins da Silva, Allyson Martins da Silva, Jocicleide Valdeci da Silva at subway station Kottbusser Tor.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b382c3ab1ecf6dfce18d10e003ee63c4ce7ffd1e25ded47e32a1311a41b68ef8/IMG_9526t-f.jpg)