The exhibition “Aktive Asche“ by Mariechen Danz and Johannes Paul Raether featuring KAYA focuses on intricate transformational processes through which the concepts and materials integral to the artists’ practises undergo further intensification, metamorphosis, corrosion and incineration. The point of departure is embodiment and its language, ritual acts and the creation of a temporary community. At Bärenzwinger [bear pit], their individual cosmologies and form-changing qualities join forces to enter a collectively shared process.

In Mariechen Danz’s practice the body serves as a place for examining knowledge-transfer and communication. In the outdoor compound, the clay figure “Womb Tomb“ has been laid out. As it absorbs information from the environment, its form changes, finally becoming a coral-like fossilisation. Stretched over the figure is a cover with digital prints by Danz, KAYA and Raether.

In an appearance by Transformalor, who has emerged from Johannes Paul Raether’s figuration as SelfSister Transformellae evolving since 2010, his/her recombined Wächterinnen reposition themselves within the bear cages, wherein the plural being teaches about “ReproReality“, or the global market of human reproduction, and the coming “Reprovolution“. In a second performance, Transformalor forks – at the moment of cremation – into a possible embodiment of entropic identity.

KAYA, acting as a fictional and concrete body, conjoin formal, painterly and metabolic procedures in their productions of identity. Within the bear pit, their “OraKle Paintings” (“Catacomb Mirrors”) carry the wishes of the participants from a workshop that recently took place at TROPEZ Sommerbad Humboldthain and amplify the sound piece by Nicolas An Xedro. As wish- and sound-paintings, they create a sound space and claim their position within a fictitious, metaphorical healing process that culminates in the performance “– KAYA_YO-NAH YO-HO (healing performance for a sick painting)”.