The provocative exhibition daHEIM – Einsichten in flüchtige Leben (daHEIM – Glances into Fugitive Lives) ran from 2016 to 2017 at the Museum of European Cultures in Dahlem, Berlin.[1] Conceptualized and curated by the artist collective KUNSTASYL, the exhibition reframes discourses around representations of migration in Germany, particularly but not exclusively those in museums, and asks: what is the difference between being at home and being accommodated? This article follows this question to demonstrate how key tropes—arrival, foreignness, violence, tokenization—that were endemic to earlier exhibitions about migration in Germany become dislodged through more complex depictions of community, collectivity, and authorship in temporary exhibitions on migration in the mid-2000s to late 2010s. Specifically, by analyzing the exhibition daHEIM – Einsichten in flüchtige Leben, I argue KUNSTASYL centers a practice of translocal activism which retranslates and satirizes contemporary ideas of nationalism. Through daHEIM – Einsichten in flüchtige Leben, the group proposes that collective artistic production and participatory curation prove transformative—as much for the curators as for the museum institution, visitors, and the broader representational landscape. Tracing the contours of daHEIM reveals this mode of translocal activism rooted in principles of collaboration, participation, and collectivity which imagines—if not enacts—what it means to be ‘at home’ in contemporary Germany rather than simply housed or accommodated.
\n
[1] English title as given by the museum.