The museum as an institution that generates contexts and place for the (re)presentation of history is at the center of Sarah Straßmann’s work. She developed a series of works for which she examined the open-air museum in Detmold. The photos show abandoned buildings, some of whose furniture is draped with white sheets. The soft folds of the fabrics are in dialogue with the otherwise indicated geometric structures, as they become visible in the photographs.

With the title „Shifting“, Straßmann points to a double-edged phenomenon of monument preservation: The term, which can be translated as „translocation“ (Translozierung), describes the procedure for deconstructing a building at its original location and reconstructing it as detailed as possible at a new location. On the one hand, what contributes to the preservation of the building, on the other hand, erases all urban, settlement and socio-historical references in which the buildings were once created and which characterize them as historical testimonies.

Formally, the photographs appear almost poetic through the play of light and composition. At the same time, the series critically revolves around questions of the context shift of what can be understood as an „original“, and thus possibly the central question in view of the responsibility of the museum as an institution: What conditions, backgrounds and what values are associated with the Object in the sense of an original and its origin linked? Where does it come from and how did it find its way into the collection or exhibition? (Jule Hillgärtner, in: „Identität nicht nachgewiesen“, exhibition catalogue Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, 2022/ shortened)