Asbest

With this exhibition, Mondtag sharply refocuses the historical themes of his installation "Monument for an Unknown Man" from Venice toward the concrete and physical. His highly acclaimed "Memory Ark" in the German Pavilion, curated by Çağla Ilk for the 2024 Biennale, brought the untold stories of Turkish guest workers to life through a spectacular staging. Using sculptures, objects, and artifacts in meticulously designed spaces and a multi-layered live performance across three floors, Mondtag crafts the biography of his grandfather as an exemplary portrait of European labor migration.In the early 1960s, Hasan Aygün arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany like about four million other recruited workers to help with the German “economic miracle.” He died before his retirement from a lung disease he contracted while producing asbestos-containing building materials in the factory.

The exhibition “Asbest” deepens the perspective on the fate of this forgotten generation of people who labored for their own and for Germany's prosperity, shifting the focus from the historical to the personal. With many new works, the search for traces focuses on the concrete body of Hasan Aygün and the subtle, long process of arriving, where the foreign land inevitably becomes a second home.Out of a cycle of 28 busts of the "unknown man," which depict gradual changes in the face for each year of work at Eternit, the plastic No. 1 for the year 1962, previously shown in the German Pavilion's "Workshop," and the last No. 28 from his last year of work for the company displayed at St. Agnes. This selection is supplemented by a third bust, No. 14, marking the year in the middle of his working life—a moment when the transformation of the worker's body has already been inscribed. With this form of plastic representation, historically reserved for "deserving" men of the bourgeois class, Ersan Mondtag once again formulates a standpoint of historical correction, as he also hinted at in the title and design of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Venice.

The composition of crucial moments in the “Asbest” exhibition juxtaposes the poetry of Aygün's family founding with concrete bureaucratic and medical events. X-rays of his grandfather's lungs are transformed into various media as plastic testimonies of invisible threat: for example, on the Eternit panels “ETERPLAN” from the company where Aygün worked for his entire life. This transfer simultaneously refers to the abstract modernity of the post-war period, when abstract art was also an expression of refusal to confront the concrete horrors of the past and present. In an elaborate process, photographic motifs are burned into these panels using a laser—the images penetrate the surface and transform the industrial material into a lasting, materially charged memory.In contrast to this aesthetic of dire consequences, snapshots from the family album, transformed onto historically charged image carriers, provide a panorama of a rich life. Alongside moments from the army or references to the founding father Atatürk, these testimonies of a life narrative are primarily time capsules of warmth and loving privacy. These excerpts from a cultural life after service indicate that the history of labor migration remains incomplete if it only recounts the participation of individuals from a victim's perspective. It is also a story of relationships, hopes and successes, longings and moments of happiness that together generate rightful pride.

These objects and sculptures are embedded in elements of the large installation from the German Pavilion. As standalone works, they capture history plastically in bodies.

The three-part orchestral suite composed by Beni Brachtel for the installation thematically addresses "Dust and Breathing," processes Hasan Aygün’s personal favorite song, and concludes with a requiem for which Albert Ostermaier wrote the text "Requiem for an Asbestos Worker". Video works that accompanied or documented the performative ritual of bringing life to the "Monument of an Unknown Man" from Venice are part of "Asbest," as are performances of German bureaucratic communication and other documents.

Thus, this exhibition sets a striking and nuanced different accent to the contemporary reflections on migration movements of people from one culture to another.

KÖNIG GALERIE | CHAPEL
ALEXANDRINENSTRASSE 118–121,
10969 BERLIN

1 MAY – 22 JUNE 2025

OPENING
2 MAY 2025 | 6 – 10 PM