“How do we turn Salt into Sugar?” at Museum Reinickendorf presents the recipients of the Dieter Ruckhaberle Award 2022/23: Anna Scherbyna and Uliana Bychenkova, artists and curators, born in Ukraine and living in Germany since March 2022. Together with other artists, Scherbyna & Bychenkova will occupy the Museum Reinickendorf and the municipal GalerieETAGE with various site-specific interventions that interact with the space and the content of the exhibition on local history. Against the backdrop of the experience of their physical and psychological loss of home, the artists look at the concept of Heimat and cultural heritage on display here – in the face of the current war and the renewed expulsions in Europe associated with it. The Museum Reinickendorf in the north of Berlin is like a curatorial cabinet of curiosities. The former Heimatmuseum combines ethnological and archaeological, contemporary historical and artistic exhibitions.

In addition, Scherbyna and Bychenkova invite you to a performative and participatory ball night of exile. This will take place at Ballhaus Wedding, an enchanted place of the 19th century Belle Époque, hidden in a Berlin backyard, which revives the great times of Berlin ballrooms. The participants are both spectators and performers. As a community-building event, the ball is a space for cultural exchange and engagement. It offers all participants the opportunity to change cultural perspectives and perceptions and to think about a different, more radical and performative idea of Willkommenskultur.

“We recognise ourselves as ‘privileged refugees’, but we don’t want to settle for fitting into the system, we want to share our defiant dreams of a new world. As displaced people, we are engaged in creative processes of assimilation, archiving, undermining and construction. New processes are constantly taking place in the processes of transformation inherent in culture: Invasion, contamination, affection and fermentation. Wondrous transformations, just like that of salt into sugar.” (Scherbyna/Bychenkova).

Accompanying Program

How do we turn Salt into Sugar? Ball Night of Exile
Ballhaus Wedding, Friday, 28.04.2023, 19:30 hrs.
Wriezener Str. 6, 13359 Berlin.
With Kateryna Aliinyk, Kateryna Berlova, Uliana Bychenkova, Giorgio D’Ausilio, Taras Gembik, Nastia Hrychkovska, Olexandr Ieltsyn, Henriëtta Jonkblutt, Ray Kaczynski, Iryna Kudria, and Anna Scherbyna.

How do we turn Salt into Sugar? is supported by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe.