‘Made in Germany?’ Review: A Multi-Layered Collage of German Identity at The Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums welcomed back students for the 2024-2025 academic year with its fall exhibition “Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation,” which debuted on Sept. 13. The exhibition was curated by Busch-Reisinger Museum’s Curator Lynette Roth, Busch-Reisinger Museum’s Curatorial Fellow Peter Murphy, and Senior Curatorial Assistant for Special Exhibitions and Publications in the Harvard Art Museums’s Division of Modern and Contemporary Art Bridget Hinz.

With creative and carefully selected objects and the combination of different mediums like film, collage, printmaking, disorienting installation, and photography, the exhibition invites the public to reflect on Germany and beyond.

The exhibition is situated within the complex history of Germany, from World War II to current issues of migration and far-right politics, and calls into question what it means to be German. As the question mark in the title of the exhibition indicates, the exhibition focuses on provoking questions rather than offering definite answers, leaning into the nuanced perspectives of artists to explore the valences of German identity in a contemporary context.

As visitors enter the exhibition, the first object encountered is a stainless steel food processor from East Germany created by Sung Tieu, a Vietnamese artist working in Berlin. The Readymade Object’s prison-like box shape foregrounds the exhibition’s themes of production and manufacturing. Tieu, who engages with conceptual art and minimalist tradition, utilized the object’s ready-made materiality to represent the restricted experience of Vietnamese contract workers in East Germany.

The exhibition continues to bring in multiple perspectives from foreign laborers to shape the image of Germany as a manufacturing giant. In particular, at the center of the gallery is a slideshow projection by Candida Höfer, which displays images of Turkish guest workers to explore the role of visual representation in calls for integration. These images of Turkish guest workers starkly contrast with an adjacent video, “The Family Tezcan,” which divulges a more dynamic living state of a Turkish family, narrated by the Turkish family themselves.

Several works urge visitors to contemplate the topic of immigration. Layered collages of newspapers, magazines, and packaging speak to the layers of politics, social systems and consumerism in the German world. One such work is “Deutschland wird deutscher” by Katharina Sieverding; the piece’s composite imagery suggests a complex layering through images of the artist surrounded by photographs of knives. This installation was seen across Berlin in 1993 in a major poster campaign.

One of the most memorable pieces of the exhibition is “Ostalgie,” an installation of furniture that is positioned along a wall, as if the viewer is stationed along the ceiling. This 2019 work by Henrike Naumann illustrates the emotion of “ostalgie” — a term that has come to mean nostalgia for former East Germany. The East-Germany styled furniture, the bones, and the dim, outdated color capture the confusion and rootlessness of the East Germans after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in face of reunification.

The theme of Germany as a global nation shines especially through the painted panels of “50 U Heinrich-Heine-Str.” by Corinne Wasmuht. The composition draws on the idea of collage and multi-layered images, creating a sense of disorientation in a modern day consumerist, globalized cityscape.

Ultimately, the exhibition powerfully examines the role of public space, commercialization, and the intergenerational impact of migration on identity, highlighting the importance of art in sparking dialogue and promoting understanding of complex historical times.

“Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation is on view in the Special Exhibitions Gallery on Level 3 of the Harvard Art Museums through Jan. 5, 2025.

—Staff writer Dailan Xu can be reached at dailan.xu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @Dailansusie.