A Connection Between Textiles and the Body
Since early July, visual artist David Behrens has been a guest at the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel Artists’ and Fellowship House. During his stay, which will last several months, he will continue to develop his artistic practice, which explores clothing fabrics and bodies.
At the center of his project is his ongoing series *imprints*. In this series, Behrens explores the material and physical properties of denim fabrics, which he transforms into monochrome pictorial surfaces through mechanical and chemical processes—including sanding, bleaching, and cyanotype. The fabrics function simultaneously as a support, a tool, and paint, operating at the intersection of drawing and painting.
Another focus of his work is an exploration of the relationship between the body and clothing. The starting point for his works are casts of human bodies, whose three-dimensional structures he transfers onto textile surfaces. He achieves this, among other ways, through the photographic technique of cyanotype. Since the textile objects are worn directly on the body during the exposure process, the body, material, and light enter into a direct dialogue and become part of an artistic process
that raises questions about memory, identity, and materiality.
To develop his artworks, he uses the method of prototyping, or as David Behrens explains his approach: “For me, it’s about trying out a lot of things. Every prototype is a step forward—even if it initially looks like a failure. Because it is precisely in failure that the most exciting ideas often lie.”
His residency at the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel Artists’ and Fellows’ House offers David Behrens the opportunity to further develop his material-oriented artistic practice: “For my residency at the Artists’ and Fellows’ House, I bought a sewing machine again. With it, I’m building on my early days studying fashion design and revisiting a medium that has shaped my artistic vision from the very beginning. Using various types of clothing fabrics, I aim to develop both two-dimensional
and three-dimensional works that explore the boundaries between textiles, sculpture, and painting.”
David Behrens (l.) demonstriert Antje Schwesig die Vorgehensweise seiner Arbeiten mit Textilien_@AMK
Im Künstlercafé am 17. September 2026 können Sie erfahren, welche dieser Ideen David Behrens umgesetzt hat. Also, merken Sie sich diese Veranstaltung gern schon einmal in Ihrem Terminkalender vor. @_AMK
Mehr zu David Behrens finden Sie auf seiner Webseite: https://www.david-behrens.de/
13.06.2026
Artists’ Café with Yasuko Yamaguchi
On 18 June 2026, the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel District Adult Education Centre hosted an ‘Artists’ Café’ at the Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ House. The guest was the Japanese composer Yasuko Yamaguchi, who has been living and working in the Hanseatic city as a scholarship holder since April.
At the end of her three-month residency, the composer offered insights into her current work and presented her artistic projects. The focus was on her compositional cycle “Schattenlicht”, which originated from an encounter with the Italy-based glass artist Oki Izumi. Her fascinating glass sculptures had already inspired Yamaguchi to compose the first part of “Schattenlicht” back in 2022. A second part has since been completed, and during her stay in Salzwedel she worked on the continuation of the piece.
The third part of “Schattenlicht” is being created under the influence of the Altmark region and its unique atmosphere. Inspired by the former division of Germany and by the rivers Jeetze and Dumme, which merge to flow as one, Yamaguchi is developing a composition for accordion and percussion. Both instruments initially appear as independent voices, but as the work progresses they draw ever closer together and eventually enter into an intense musical dialogue.
“For me, music is about shaping time with sounds” says Yasuko Yamaguchi, describing her artistic approach. This idea runs like a common thread through her works, in which sounds, memories, spaces and moods are interwoven in a unique way.
At the Artists’ Café, the composer gave an impressive presentation of her work and offered the audience an inspiring preview of ‘Schattenlicht 3’: she gave an exemplary performance of the piece – which draws on her impressions of her stay in Salzwedel – on the piano. The world premiere, featuring the intended original instruments – accordion and percussion – is already being planned. @AMK
07.06.2026
Opening of the StipendiatenArt exhibition on 18 June 2026 at the Danneil Museum
It is a long-standing tradition for the Danneil Museum to provide a platform for the visual artists who spent the previous year in Salzwedel as scholarship holders. In 2025, these were Adelheid Fuss from Potsdam and Johannes Weilandt from Berlin.
The opening of the StipendiatenART exhibition, featuring works by Adelheid Fuss and Johannes Weilandt, will take place on Thursday 18 June 2026 at 5 pm at the Danneil Museum in Salzwedel.
Adelheid Fuss
Adelheid Fuss with her first four drawings in the studio of the scholarship house; @ AF
As part of her residency, the sculptor and graphic artist explored the relationship between geography and biography, as well as the construction of identity. The result is a series of portrait-like depictions of people, combined with landscape-like elements. The exhibition will also feature works created immediately before and after her stay in Salzwedel.
Adelheid Fuss was born in Romania in 1977 and has lived in Germany since 1987. She studied sculpture at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle/Saale and at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Since graduating, she has lived and worked in Potsdam.
In 2021, she received the Brandenburg Art Prize for Graphic Art. This was followed in 2024 and 2025 by several grants for artist-in-residence stays in Germany and Switzerland. Her work focuses on people, their relationships with one another and with our ever-changing world.
Johannes Weilandt
Johannes Weilandt in the studio in front of his drawings @_AMK
During his residency at the Salzwedel Artists’ and Scholars’ House, the visual artist Johannes Weilandt explored the so-called ‘Gallian theory of the skull’, drawing on his drawings of a skull specimen from the Meckel Collections at the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at MLU Halle-Wittenberg. Named after the German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), this theory claimed to be able to determine a person’s disposition and character on the basis of purely external features.
The exhibition will feature drawings created during the artist’s residency, which emerged from a critical artistic engagement with the devastating consequences of this now scientifically disproved theory of skulls. These drawings are framed by earlier works that already addressed the institutionalisation of the human body in medical-historical collections and the associated questions of representational ethics.
Johannes Weilandt lives and works in Berlin and Halle Saale. He studied Fine Art / Stage and Costume Design at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and the University of Fine Arts in Belgrade. In 2022, he was awarded the title of Meisterschüler. His works are usually preceded by intensive research in medical history collections and archives.
You can look forward to an interesting exhibition featuring both artists.
12.04.2026
Musical contrasts & convergence
The talented composer Yasuko Yamaguchi began her residency at the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel Artists’ and Fellows’ House in early April. At a press conference, she offered an exclusive first glimpse into her exciting plans.
She first came into contact with the Hanseatic city of Salzwedel back in 2016 during her three-month stay at the Künstlerhof Schreyahn in Lower Saxony. Even then, she was captivated by the magic of nature and the enchanting half-timbered houses – so much so that she wanted to return and applied for the residency at the Artists’ and Scholars’ House. Now she is devoting herself to a new, exciting composition project right here.
During her stay in Salzwedel, Yamaguchi plans to compose a piece with the working title “Schattenlicht 3” for accordion and percussion. Inspired by the division between East and West Germany, as well as by the course of the Jeetze and Dumme rivers, which merge into one, she experiments with the musical representation of separation and rapprochement. In this piece, the accordion and percussion are initially set to face each other as independent entities. However, as the piece progresses, the two draw closer and eventually engage in an intense dialogue.
Yasuko Yamaguchi works in a traditional manner: she begins her compositions with handwritten jottings of ideas and brief notes, initially in written form. These eventually develop into melodies, which she carefully transcribes onto sheet music. “I compose very slowly, which is why I probably won’t be able to present a complete piece of music by the end of my scholarship,” she emphasised, however.
Yasuko Yamaguchi particularly values the peace and quiet that her stay affords her, allowing her to focus entirely on her compositional work – an opportunity that is otherwise rare due to her private commitments as a piano teacher.
To find inspiration, Yasuko Yamaguchi enjoys going for walks; she loves half-timbered houses, the sound of birdsong and the open countryside. The Altmark offers all of this in abundance and thus possesses great creative potential. “I was fascinated by the crooked half-timbered houses right from the start,” said Yasuko Yamaguchi, adding with a wink: “And I compose quirky, new music. It all fits together nicely.” She is now looking forward to getting to know her surroundings better and drawing inspiration from them.
You can find out what that sounds like at the Artists’ Café on 18 June 2026. So, do make a note of this event in your diary.
More about Yasuko Yamaguchi
Yasuko Yamaguchi was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1969. She studied composition at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music under Akira Kitamura, Hideo Kobayashi and Michio Mamiya. She subsequently undertook postgraduate studies at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf under Manfred Trojahn, graduating with a diploma in 2000.
Yasuko Yamaguchi has received numerous awards, including the City of Düsseldorf’s Music Promotion Prize (2005) and various grants, amongst others from the Künstlerhof Schreyahn (2016), the Federal Minister of State for Culture at the German Study Centre in Venice (2018), the Musikfonds Berlin and the German Music Council. Most recently, she lived as a scholarship holder in Bellwald, Switzerland, in the summer of 2022, and has been invited to spend three months at the Fondazione Casa Atelier Bedigliora in Switzerland in the summer of 2027.
Her major commissions include works for Music From Japan (New York), the Kunststiftung NRW, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf and the Dr. Karl Emil and Lilli Brügmann Foundation. The orchestral work “Das Stehaufmännchen ist umgefallen” (1999) was nominated for the 10th Akutagawa Composition Prize and has been performed by leading Japanese orchestras such as the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.
Yasuko Yamaguchi’s works have been performed worldwide by ensembles such as the E-MEX Ensemble, Studio Musikfabrik, 175 East (New Zealand), the Tokyo Sinfonietta and others. Numerous international festivals, including the ACL Festival in Taiwan, the International Gaudeamus Music Week in the Netherlands, the Munich Biennale and the Music From Japan Festival in New York, have been among her key performance venues.
Yasuko Yamaguchi lives and works as a freelance composer in Düsseldorf.
Further information and audio samples can be found on their website:
www.yasukoyamaguchi.com
(@AMK)
11.03.2026
Artists’ Café with scholarship holder Heekeun Kim on 19 March 2026
On Thursday, 19 March 2026, at 6:30 p.m., the district adult education centre and the Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ Association cordially invite you to the Artists’ Café. As part of this event, visual artist Heekeun Kim will present the work she created during her three-month scholarship.
Heekeun Kim was born in Seoul in 1979 and lives in Braunschweig. Her artistic work focuses on exploring the role and influence of architecture and the function of temporary spaces. During her scholarship, she has engaged intensively with architectural interventions – not only through research, but also through lively dialogue with the location itself. Heekeun Kim studied fine art at the Braunschweig University of Art and was a master student of Prof. Thomas Virnich. She has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the annual scholarship from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (2024) and the working scholarship from the Kunstfonds Bonn Foundation (2023). Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Wrong Biennale in Alicante (Spain) (2023/2024) and Documenta 15 in Kassel (2022).
@AMK
All the important details at a glance
Date: Thursday, 19 March 2026
Time: 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Location: Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ House | Kleine Predigerstraße 1 | 29410 Hanseatic City of Salzwedel
We look forward to welcoming you to the Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ House.
