Published on the occasion of Karin Kneffel’s exhibition Haymatlos at Dirimart (13 November 2020 17 January 2021), this trilingual catalogue explores themes of memory, displacement, and belonging. The 19 paintings on view establish a dialogue between Germany and Turkey through the notion of heimatlos-statelessness-probing how the past is recalled, altered, or transformed, leaving ambiguous traces in the present. Kneffel engages with the legacies of three exiled figures who lived in Istanbul: architect Bruno Taut, sculptor Rudolf Belling, and designer Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky. Their iconic works-the Bosphorus house designed by Taut, Belling’s Inoenu sculpture and Skulptur 49, and Schutte-Lihotzky’s pioneering Frankfurter Kuche-reappear under Kneffel’s painterly veil of drops, bubbles, and brushstrokes, questioning whether the world is ever truly familiar. Enriched with an essay by Julia Voss, along with studio and installation views, the catalogue situates Haymatlos within Kneffel’s broader practice and her celebrated retrospective STILL in Germany. Text in English and Turkish and German.
