Nägel
Sonya Schönberger
07.03. – 18.04.2025   
St. Matthäus-Kirche

»Can the dead redeem the living? Can the past help the present?«

The Human Acts, 2014, Han Kang

Interviews with contemporary witnesses, archives and archaeological artefacts are not only sources of inspiration for Sonya Schönberger, but also a starting point for approaching the past. In her works, Schönberger traces the forgotten and neglected, creating an in-between that is as fragile as it is fleeting, in which personal experience meets German history. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Second World War. While contemporary witnesses fall silent, artefacts often remain silent witnesses to the past. During Passiontide, Schönberger is dedicating her exhibition Nägel to the topic of forced labour. She thematises the carriers of our memory and the fluid connections between then and now and the time in between.

Archaeological traces as witnesses
The exhibition takes as its starting point 13,000 nails, unearthed during an archaeological excavation at Tempelhofer Feld between 2012 and 2014 by Landesdenkmalamt Berlin and the Freie Universität Berlin. These nails once held together the barracks of the forced labour camp, which presumably mainly housed Soviet men. From 1941, forced labourers who were used to work in the armaments production of Deutsche Lufthansa and Weser Flugzeugbau GmbH lived there at two locations on the field.

In the exhibition, Schönberger poses the question of whether we can use these nails to approach the cruel reality of forced labour? Can these nails materialise memory? Can archaeological artefacts transport the past into the present? In her video work and walk-in installation, Schönberger turns the rusty nails into carriers of history, into symbols of a painful legacy that is reflected both in biblical imagery and in the present.

Proximity and distance
In her video work Annäherung (2020), which can be seen in the devotional space, she engages with the nails for the first time. The video shows Schönberger photographing the individually inventoried nails – an action that she herself describes as a »search«. This meticulous, repetitive and therefore almost meditative gesture creates a process of approach and simultaneous distancing – an inventory in which collective and individual memory are brought together for a moment. Schönberger presents large-format portraits of the nails – individually or in small groups – in the centre of the altar area of St. Matthäus-Kirche. In a seemingly endless, slowed-down loop, they reveal their different forms: crooked, injured, bent, joined. The close-up shots show their rusty, damaged state. In their raw presence, they seem to point to the individuality of the prisoners' suffering.

A walkable trail of memory
The floor of the altar area of St. Matthäus-Kirche is covered with 13,000 nails and rust, as the transformation process of this work already began during the first presentation in the Schwerbeastungskörper in Berlin in 2021 and is now being continued. The nails can be felt and heard with every step. The rust that has settled on their surface over decades is slowly ground away underfoot. It is carried out into the streets of the city. This process of physical interaction changes the installation over time. Its image changes, the traces of history seem to dissolve into the present, which it is actually trying to preserve. This constantly transforming walk-in installation makes it clear that the traces of the traumas of the past can never be completely erased from the present.

So can the dead redeem the living? Can the past help the present? In her novel »Menschenwerk«, Han Kang deals with the violence and collective trauma of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, showing that memory is never complete, but an ongoing process of negotiation, questioning and passing on. Sonya Schönberger's exhibition Nägel does not simply reappraise the past either. Rather, she makes it clear that memory brings our present to life and makes us aware of our responsibility.

Videobearbeitung: Flo Maak
Ausstellungsplanung und Aufbau: Christof Zwiener und Bernd Trasberger