The (-) Gallery - Power shift

The (—) Gallery is a recurring pop-up event at Hamburg’s Oberhafen that defies the conventions of the mainstream art world. By creating space for the raw, unfiltered voices of queer and marginalized artists, it offers a radical alternative to the exclusivity of traditional galleries. Celebrating collaboration, diversity, and artistic freedom, it serves as both a platform and a catalyst for work that challenges norms, provokes discourse, and reclaims space.

Set within an industrial venue that functions as a multidisciplinary playground for creative minds, the installation came with notable challenges, including an extremely tight budget and limited planning time.

My proposal for POWER SHIFT, was as a direct response to the gallery’s core themes of transformation and spatial reclamation. The exhibition room is surrounded by walls featuring large openings to adjacent workspaces and offices—designed to let in light, but leaving little continuous surface for hanging artworks.

To address this, I designed a modular system: a wooden frame structure supporting suspended mosquito net panels and a neon tube with directional blinders. Artworks were hung using nylon cables, allowing them to appear as if floating in space. A metallic curtain (waterproofing material) served as a background atrackting people to the back of the room. Visitors were invited to move through a series of translucent, ethereal columns, fully immersed in a constellation of images that surrounded them from every direction