Neun Kelche presents the exhibition Outlaw Feelings with the performance Burden Ballads both by Berlin based artist Melanie Jame Wolf. Over the years, the artist has moved between performance and visual art. In this new solo exhibition at Neun Kelche, she will show exclusively sculptural works, including three latex textile pieces with metal and ceramic elements, which work in conversation across the space. 

The installation is part of Melanie Jame’s long-term research into the performativity of objects and materials - in particular fabric, and focuses on the politics and poetics of social expectations for the containment of emotion. The artist is interested in the subversive power of outlaw feelings – feelings that leak and refuse containment such as grief, rage, dark humor, and joy that is ‘too loud’ -  and the alienation that can follow their expression.

During the opening, Melanie Jame Wolf, joined by Maxi Wallenhorst and MINQ, will activate the exhibition with a 30 minute performative draft reading of a new ‘mini-opera’ libretto consisting of choreography, text, and song. The exhibition reflects on the power and complexity of navigating through feelings between class, identity, agency, weirdness, and questions of mortality. 

The opening event is organized by Neda Naujokaitė with assistance from Adomas Rybakovas.

Neun Kelche is a project space curated by Kira Dell and Laura Seidel on Pasedagplatz in Berlin-Weißensee. The artist Neda Naujokaitė joined the team in May 2024.

Since the beginning of 2021, local artists have found a space for exchange and socializing here. Their program is developed based on the neighborhood and further developed nationally and internationally in collaborations. They work with FLINTA* artists who create site-specific installations and expand their work performatively or with film/video/sound. 

As a curatorial duo, Kira Dell and Laura Seidel have been working since 2018 on gender-specific issues, ideas of collective love, motherhood and art, artistic research on the universe, and utopias of planetary coexistence of human and non-human agents. Intersections emerge from the working process with the artists, and they prefer to develop the exhibition themes together rather than impose a rigid curatorial program. The starting point of their work is transparent financing clarified in advance. Through long-term collaboration with project partners, they aim to counteract fast-moving work structures.