Concrete Comeback ⚣⚢ Arms are for Linking was a solo exhibition at Stadtgalerie, Bern, Switzerland, curated by Luca Beeler. The exhibition centred around a series of signs, sound pieces experienced on Molitor ear pieces, as well as a video and an animation contained in a constructed walled environment reminiscent of a concrete underground shelter of the Cold War Period, and a series of props. 

Emerging from a long period of research on the experience of LGBTQ+ elders in Bern, and drawing on the Swiss Social Archive and State Archive, the exhibition included collaborations with Dani V Keller and Katrin Barben. 

The work revisited the “Lavender Scare” of the Cold War period, in which there was paranoia about the loyalty of homosexuals to the state, and also foregrounded responses by local lesbians and gay men to the surveillance and restrictions of that era. 

Amongst other elements, concrete standards developed by Switzerland appeared within an audio work featuring the words of a civil engineer, and were in dialogue with standards set around the normative family. The conversation of two women who had staged a non-violent action in a bunker in Geneva in 1986 appeared on a video, and the response by the local lesbian hosts was reproduced in a handout. 

Click here for further information, exhibition floorplans and texts (German and English).

Click here to download the artist book dossier of the exhibition.