beständig war die Perle [the bead was constant]
29 June – 26 October 2025, Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren
beständig war die Perle – Werkstätten & Wandel
[the bead was constant – Workshops & Transformation]
23 November 2025 – 15 February 2026, Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren
The artistic research project beständig war die Perle [the bead was constant] examines the significance of the glass bead as a collector's item, a global commodity and a handcrafted product.
Based on research at historical production sites in Jablonec nad Nisou and Venice, the glass bead establishes connections between different places and times – from Venice to South America, from Bohemia to Swabia, to the structural change of the Neugablonz district in Kaufbeuren. A personal collection of specimens is made accessible through artistic sorting in the exhibition. The collection tells of global trade at different times in colonial and neocolonial contexts, as well as of the dimension of learning a handicraft, the disappearance of craft techniques and workshops, in collaboration with actors in the Neugablonz district.
The starting point is Frauke Zabel's apprenticeship as a silversmith and goldsmith at the Berufsfachschule für Glas und Schmuck Kaufbeuren-Neugablonz and her learning of the technique of glass bead winding at the Bohemian lamp fire.
For the second phase of the project, the focus lies on the craft itself and the places where it is practised – the workshops. The collection is supplemented by works from the classes at the Berufsfachschule für Glas und Schmuck. In addition to the presentation in the exhibition space, walks invite visitors to explore the district. Together, they visit places of current and historical production. The glass bead is used to trace changes in production processes and transformations in Neugablonz. New video works reflect this exploration of the Neugablonz district back into the exhibition at the Kunsthaus.
[images: Frank Bauer and Frauke Zabel]
Munich, São Paulo – A collaborative counter-archiving on the Martius and Spix collection.
city walks and workshops, University of São Paulo; September 2024
Jardim Botânico São Paulo | Museu do Ipiranga | Museu de Zoologia | Itaú Cultural - Brasiliana
Their Brazil trip from 1817 to 1820 took zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix and botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius from Rio de Janeiro, via São Paulo, to the Amazon region. During this journey they amassed an extensive collection. Today, the Martius and Spix collection is distributed across Munich by discipline, with Martius’s manuscripts in the State Library and palms growing in the Botanical Garden. Spix died soon after returning from Brazil, while Martius continued a long scientific career, thoroughly evaluating the collected material. He published not only as a botanist but also on Indigenous language or the history of Brazil. Obvious and covert traces in Munich’s public space reveal how the journey is still recognizable today. The collection I compiled treats the palm as an non-native plant and aesthetic figure, tracing Martius’s scientific, economic, and aesthetic interest in palms. What material and immaterial traces of the Martius and Spix collection can be found today in Munich’s urban space, in the collections, in books, or in the Botanical Garden?
With the shift of the search for traces to the urban space of São Paulo, a collaborative shift in perspective on the Martius and Spix collection and its Munich ‘traces’ became possible. The walks featured a heterogeneous group: artists, cultural workers, activists, and students from various disciplines who collaborated on counter-archiving the Martius and Spix collection from their perspectives. To explore connections between São Paulo and Munich, I selected institutions that make the historical link between art and natural science tangible. The starting point of the São Paulo city walks was my artistic and equally subjective “archive.” We brought this archive in São Paulo into exchange with the seminar group and the urban space, where it was debated. Based on the archive of photographs and images of finds from my Munich search, participants were invited to develop their own narratives and engagements with the Martius and Spix collection using different methods. We covered the seminar room floor with photographs of greenhouses, parrot statues, landscape lithographs, maps, travel scenes, and palms in Munich cafés to discuss new groupings. In dialogue with exhibition objects and images from the Brasiliana exhibition at Itaú Cultural, a series of postcards arose that employ the method of “Fabulation” to fill historical gaps and correct certain representations.
In the park between the Ipiranga City Museum and the São Paulo Zoological Museum, the participants cut and glued the material from Munich into collages; in the São Paulo Botanical Garden we used the method of critical mapping to relate this site to Martius’s places of life and work in Munich. The invitation to participants to re-arrange the material I brought from their current São Paulo perspective—into their own narratives—challenged the taxonomic order Martius carried, which aimed at stability, classification, and hierarchy. Grouping was understood as a temporary assembly, a working pool of heterogeneous materials. The exchange highlighted what emerges when material is viewed from the perspective of those who hold it. In the spirit of leaving traces, some groupings were transferred to posters in public spaces in São Paulo and Munich.
Counter-archiving as practice
What gaps, omissions, and dominant narratives around the Martius and Spix collection can be jointly named? By using the term “counter-archiving” I do not claim to create a neutral, objective place free from all power structures within an archive. Counter-archiving is understood as a frame and possibility to jointly name the objects collected in Brazil, dominant narratives and continuities arising from scientific research and visual culture, as well as missing voices, gaps, and omissions. I view counter-archiving as an art-educational method, not intended to establish a new archive—a supposed “place of completeness.” Rather, it enables participants in the “here and now” to discuss the heritage of a 19th-century natural science collection without absolute claims of truth. The question of classifying and conserving an archive is set aside in favor of the collective process. Counter-archiving is seen as an evolving practice that can continue at future opportunities and encounter new perspectives. Our approach acknowledges the relevance of scientifically addressing the Martius and Spix collection in light of the climate crisis, without erasing its colonial and brutal origins and the power relations inherent in the collection.
My thanks go to all participants for their trust and for sharing their thoughts and for jointly creating materials, as well as Laura Kemmer (DAAD-Martius Chair; University of São Paulo) for the invitation and support in conducting the workshops, which follow our idea of a shared practice.
[in progress – publication release early 2026]
die Palmen sich wie folgt gruppieren:
12.07. – 01.10.2023 | Maximilians Forum München
in collaboration with Anna Lena von Helldorff and Juliana R.
We encounter palm trees in the most diverse contexts as a symbol and promise of paradise. In the global North - a rather non-natural habitat of palm trees - palm trees appear as an exoticised and romanticised symbol of non-European territories since colonial expansion and domination. The positive connotation of the plant is thus fragile and ambivalent in the face of a long ecological and economic exploitation.
The tension between scientific, economic and aesthetic interests in palms is particularly evident in the work of the botanist Carl Friedrich Phillip von Martius. Martius returned from Brazil to Munich in 1820 after a three-year research trip. Subsequently he devoted a large part of his research interest to palm trees.
The exhibition places excerpts of Martius' work on palm trees in the context of contemporary specimens and evidence. The artistic research on this plant family begins in the herbarium of the Botanical State Collection in Munich. This is also where the herbarium specimens of palms that Martius collected in Brazil between 1817 - 1820 are located. These specimens were determined by him according to common procedures. This means that hitherto unknown species were given a scientific name and, in this process, were enclosed in a western, taxonomic classification system. Seeds brought from Brazil were cultivated in the Munich Botanical Garden, presumably also for the royal winter garden.
While researching Martius' work, a collection of "evidence" emerged that tells of palm trees as a research object and their associated symbolism, exoticisation, profitability, knowledge creation and trade in colonial and neo-colonial lines of connection.
The installation the palm trees grouping themselves as follows: takes the method of grouping through linguistic interpretation as its starting point. This possible sorting of the individual collection of palms continues the principle of classifying in a spatial installation in the MaximiliansForum. The different manifestations of the specimens themselves become the occasion for questions of representation as well as sorting according to an apparently objective and universal order.
[images: Verena Kathrein]
die Palmen sich wie folgt gruppieren:
Bamberg 2023
26 November 2023 – 07 Januar 2024, Kunstverein Bamberg
seventeen specimens of the Vogelsaal, Naturkundemuseum Bamberg
le palme che si aggruppano com segue:
31 October – 26 November 2023, Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig, D3082
in collaboration with Anna Lena von Helldorff, curated by Petra Schaefer
o rei adorava palmeiras/ the king loved palm trees
An attempt to tell this story.
performance with Juliana R./ images: Luís Knihs
esponja, São Paulo; 2023
Language: German/ Portuguese/ English
We find palm trees in the most diverse contexts as a symbol and promise of paradise. In the global North - an unnatural habitat for palm trees –they appear as an exotic and romanticized symbol of non-European territories since colonial expansion. The positive connotation of the plant is therefore fragile and ambivalent in the face of long ecological and economic exploitation.
The tension between scientific, economic, and aesthetic interest in palm trees is particularly evident in the work of botanist Carl Friedrich Phillip von Martius. Martius returned from Brazil to Munich in 1820 after a three-year research trip and subsequently devoted much of his research interest to palm trees.
The performance brings together the context of Martius' work with a visual, sound and historical relationship of artificial palm tree habitats and their symbolic meaning.
The performative walk brings together an acoustic foray through artificial habitats of palm trees in São Paulo with research on historical palm research, botanical classification and cultivation of palm trees in Munich.
Language: German/ Portuguese
Widerstand – Aneignung, Übersetzung und Transfer. Ein Realitätstheater,
2019–2023
Installation view Beyond Spectacle, Platform München; 2023
Printed Book, Video, Poster, Script
Spaziergang durch die Sammlung Spix und Martius
in context of im Grünen; zentral, offen, alt together with Leonie Chima Emeka
2021
06.08.2021: Reading in the Handkerchief Tree and Teppichgespräch with ethnologist Wolfgang Kapfhammer and Leonie Chima Emeka
04.09.2021: Walks through the Alter Botanischer Garten with the Kunstpavilion Team Lena Bröcker, Anna Lena von Helldorff, Katharina Weishäupl and interested people; city map on infrastructure and setting with Munich pavement slabs; reading of the contribution to the Botanische Staatssammlung with Katharina Weishäupl
Locations of the walk [texts in progress]: Allitera Verlag, Alter Botanischer Garten, Botanischer Garten, Botanische Staatssammlung, Gedenktafel für Martius, Luitpold Café, Martiusstraße, Mineralogische Staatssammlung, Museum Fünf Kontinente, Palmenhaus; Schloß Nymphenburg, Residenz, Staatsbibliothek München, Stadtmuseum, Südlicher Friedhof, Zoologische Staatssammlung
Photos: Anna Lena von Helldorff and Stefan Freund
The collection of the naturalists Spix and Martius, which they brought with them from Brazil in the 19th century, is today distributed among various institutions in Munich. Carl Philipp Friedrich von Martius was the director of the Botanical Garden, which was back then located on what is now the site of the Alter Botanischer Garten. Together with the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, the botanist led an expedition to Brazil (1817-1820) at the behest of King Maximilian I Joseph. I invited the art historian Leonie Chima Emeka, with her focus on provenance research, to follow together the traces of this research trip in Munich's public space. In the course of their trip to Brazil, the two naturalists imported a considerable collection of animals, plants, cultural objects and minerals.The walk is leading along several museums and streets, cafés and various parks. Focusing on the whereabouts of the collection, the walk invites visitors to take a special look at Munich's history and ask questions about colonialism, ownership and foreignness, exoticisation and palm trees to find out how a journey to Brazil has shaped the city to this day and how this heritage is dealt with.
Widerstand – Aneignung, Übersetzung und Transfer. Ein Realitätstheater.
Performance 80' / Discussion / 2020
KV Leipzig / as part of the exhibition Please divide in groups of two or three
with Diana Felber, Nora Wehofsits, Louis Hay, Anna Lena von Helldorff, Anna Jehle, Juliane Schickedanz, Frauke Zabel
outfit: KV–Vereinskollektion by Katrin Mayer
photos: Caspar Sänger
The printed book "Realität–Theater–Körper–Aneignung–Übersetzung–Transfer. Möglichkeiten und Unmöglichkeiten des Widerstands", published by adocs publishing in 2019, was repeatedly revised by Frauke Zabel in collaboration with Anna Lena von Helldorff after its publication. The long-term project takes its starting point in a discussion between five cultural workers – Cláudio Bueno, Bárbara Esmenia, Peter Pál Pelbart, Sylvia Prado and Márcia Silva – in São Paulo about resistance against neo-fascism, right-wing populism and censorship in Brazil. Already in this conversation, the role of Frauke Zabel, as a white, German artist in Brazil who invited to this discussion and sits at the table, comes into focus.
The reworking and reflection on this role has been transferred as an ongoing process into a video work. In the video, the performative reading of the text becomes visible alongside the editing and reworking of the printed book, as a continuous examination and process of learning.
Widerstand – Aneignung, Übersetzung und Transfer. Ein Realitätstheater.
Performance 80' / Discussion / 2019
Neues Rathaus München
with Anne Kulbatzki, Jules* Elting, Mehmet Sözer, Isabelle Cohn, Vivi Balby and Diana Marie Müller
photos: Constanza Meléndez
The Joker System
Video 20’ / Installation / 2018
Text source: Augusto Boal, “A sistema coringa”, 1967
Voice: Diogo da Cruz
The video The Joker System is based on the 1967 by Augusto Boal made slide film A sistema coringa (The Joker System). In this slide film, which consists of 50 slides, Boal describes the development of the Joker system, which marks a big step towards the Theater of the Oppressed. Each slide is accompanied by a short paragraph of text explaining the context of each picture.
The projection of the slides one after another on a wall was filmed. So the slide film has become a movie, accompanied by a reading of the slightly altered original text of Boal.
Towards Healing
Performance 25' / 2018
Sound: Juliana R.
Performer: Luis Argauer, Charlotte Coosemans, Leonie Emeka, Mira Mann, Lukas Rath
Photos: Beowulf Tomek
The Performance Towards Healing consists of movements and interactions between four Performers. The spatial and sculptural form of the space refers to the architecture of the Teatro de Arena in São Paulo. By using this technique of Statue Theater the performers are restaging various documentary images of different theater plays at the Teatro de Arena from 1964 to 1971. The reenactment develops a new narration which consists of the combination of historical images from different theater plays. The movement and touches are addressing contexts from care to violent, manipulative shaping of another person. Different group constellations are created in the course of the performance without any verbal communication.
