Open Windows

Jane Garbert

Alison Darby

Birgit Hoelmer

The Open Windows project is a platform for encounters and cultural exchanges that opens up opportunities for new artistic experiments and the creation of a sustainable international network.

As a result of the collaboration between Structura Gallery, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the independent project ROAM, Berlin, German artists will stay in Sofia to get acquainted with the local art scene, its main actors and the socio-political situation. The projects created during this artist residency will be destined for the gallery’s showcases. They will also be visible from the street, thus unobtrusively drawing passers-by into the art world.

Selected artists:

Birgit Hölmer is a German artist currently living in Berlin. After studying graphic design at the Fachhochschule Münster, she graduated from the Münster Academy of Art. Since 2017 she has been teaching drawing at UdK Berlin. In her work, she often deals with themes such as gentrification and the development of neighbourhoods and cities. Using cut-out stickers that she places on various shop windows around the city, she creates geometric, 3D-like paintings on the glass windows. Her works are easily recognizable and can be perceived from inside the space in which they are placed as well as from the street outside.

Jane Garbert studied Cultural Studies at the European University of Viadrina, graduating in 2019 from UdK in the class of Christine Streuli. Her work is also strongly related to development and everyday life in big cities, but the focus is mainly on the materials surrounding us on the streets. She is fascinated by building sites and industrial landscapes.

Alison Darby is born in Belgium but currently based in Berlin. In 2018 she graduated Fine Arts at UdK in the class of prof. Manfred Pernis. In her work, she often addresses the history, present and future of neighbourhoods and residential areas, exploring and focusing on the socio-economic structures that define the architectural design that surrounds us in our everyday lives.