INVITATION to the Artists’ Café 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.
31.01.2026
A new chapter in artistic spatial perception
Artists’ and scholarship holders’ residence becomes creative home for Heekeun Kim.
Mirko Rathke, chairman of the Friends of the Artists’ and Scholarship House Association, accompanied by representatives of the Altmark district of Salzwedel and the Hanseatic city of Salzwedel, welcomed the first scholarship holder of the year: Heekeun Kim.
The South Korean artist moved into the scholarship house just a week ago, but she was already able to gather her first impressions of her new surroundings during a guided tour of the city with Ines Kahrens. ‘I really like the architecture of the city, especially the half-timbered houses with their structure, which provide a wonderful basis for my art,’ says Heekeun Kim. Her artistic practice is deeply rooted in her exploration of architecture and temporary spaces. After her first explorations of the Hanseatic city, the town hall tower and the mayor’s courtyard have remained particularly memorable for her.
As part of her scholarship, she wants to develop spatial interventions that explore the interrelationship between body and architecture. Her focus is on the often overlooked ‘interstitial spaces’ – those subtle places that are usually not the centre of our perception, but which have enormous creative potential. In one of her earlier works, for example, she mirrored a wall on the floor one-to-one, transforming the existing vertical structure into a horizontal one. This change created a new spatial dynamic that redefined the perception of the room and the possibilities for movement.
For the next three months, the artist and scholarship house will be her creative home, where she will seek inspiration and develop ideas for her installations. Heekeun Kim emphasised: ‘I want to specialise in an architectural detail of a space in the city and create new perspectives by making changes to the object.’ In doing so, she wants to create not only art to look at, but three-dimensional works to touch and experience. She plans to redesign interesting interiors through fixtures or reduced models and promote dialogue between art and the public. It remains to be seen which materials she will use for her art.
More about Heekeun Kim
Heekeun Kim was born in Seoul in 1979, where she studied photography at the Seoul Institute of the Arts from 1999 to 2001. In 2012, she began a diploma programme under Prof. Björn Dahlem and Prof. Thomas Virnich at the Braunschweig University of Art, which she completed in 2017. In 2018, she was awarded the title of Meisterschülerin under Prof. Thomas Virnich.
Kim’s work has been supported by various grants and scholarships. In 2024, she received both the working grant from the Künstlerhäuser Worpswede and a one-year scholarship from the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture. These awards followed a notable year in 2023, when she received the NEUSTARTplus grant from the Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn.Her artistic practice is also fostered through international exhibitions. Notable events include her participation in The Wrong Biennale 2023/2024 in Alicante, Spain, as well as several exhibitions in Germany, including Entäusserungen at the Städtische Galerie Braunschweig (2022) and Whence comes this rush of wings? at Künstlerstätte Stuhr Heiligenrode (2019). @_AMK
20.12.2025
Artists’ café on 18 December with Johannes Weilandt
The Altmarkkreis Salzwedel Adult Education Centre and the Association for the Promotion of the Artists’ and Scholars’ House invited guests to the Artists’ Café on 18 December 2025. Over coffee, tea and light refreshments, current scholarship holder Johannes Weilandt gave interested guests an insight into his art and his life.
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 Belgrade. His serial drawings are usually preceded by intensive research in medical history collections and archives. Of central importance to him is the critical examination of the institutionalisation of the human body and the associated questions of representational ethics.
During his scholarship stay at the Artists’ and Scholarship House in Salzwedel, visual artist Johannes Weilandt explored the so-called ‘Gall’s skull theory’ based on his drawings of a skull specimen from the Meckel Collections of the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at MLU Halle-Wittenberg. Named after the German physician Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828), this theory claimed to be able to determine a person’s disposition and character based purely on external characteristics.
For the Artist Café, Weilandt vividly presented and explained the process of his critical, artistic examination of the devastating consequences of this doctrine, which has since been scientifically disproved. Using examples from his earlier and current work, he also spoke about the method and significance of artistic research for his drawing practice. @_AMK
Some interested guests accepted the invitation to the artists’ café.
17.11.2025
Second Sunday in Advent at the Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ House 2025
Sunday, 7 December, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
› Exhibitions ‘Illustrations’ – Artist Mirko Rathke
› Drawings ‘Vermessen’ – Scholarship holder Johannes Weilandt
› ‘Film Sequences’ – Artist Café
*2 p.m.:* Guitar duo ‘Norbert Leitel & Jörg Rahmsdorf’
*4 p.m.: * Choir ‘Soundqueens’
with lard and quince sandwiches, gingerbread and mulled wine
Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ House | Kleine Prediger Str. 1 | Salzwedel
22.10.2025
Creative dialogue between art and medical history
Fascinating drawings featuring sections of a human skull surrounded visual artist Johannes Weilandt in the studio of the Artists’ and Scholarship House as he explained his plans for his scholarship residency.
As part of this three-month scholarship, which Johannes Weilandt began on 1 October, he wants to take an in-depth look at the medical-historical representation of the human body.
Weilandt’s artistic practice is based on the question of how institutions inscribe themselves into our bodies, represent them, shape them and cause them to disappear. His interest also focuses on the experience of medical institutions from the perspective of patients, a topic that is increasingly being explored by medical history research. The source material from which he conceives his drawings and then develops them in an open process consists primarily of visual artefacts, such as photographs, hand drawings, schematic graphics and animations, which he finds in medical collections and archives.
During his stay at the Artists’ and Scholarship Holders’ House, Weilandt will focus specifically on an anatomical exhibit from the Meckel Collections in Halle (Saale): the ‘Gall’s Skull’. This finely inscribed human skull shows 27 numbered zones marked with character traits or abilities such as belligerence, murderousness, astuteness, thirst for glory or prudence. In the early 19th century, it was believed that different areas of the brain were responsible for different characteristics and abilities and that these were visible in the external shape of the skull. In other words, the shape of the skull allowed conclusions to be drawn about a person’s personality and mental abilities. Despite the scientific refutation of this theory, it had far-reaching implications for police work and psychiatry in the 19th century, as well as for medicine during the Nazi era.
Inspired by his artistic research, Johannes Weilandt will explore the historical significance of the ‘Gall skull’ through drawing, drawing on sketches and notes he made during his time in Halle. The creative process will be subject to continuous reflection, from the choice of format to the drawing techniques used. Weilandt will also document the development of his artistic process in a specially designed work journal, which will accompany him on his journey.
The results of Weilandt’s project will be presented at the end of his residency at the Artist Café on 18 December 2025. You can look forward to a powerful artistic exploration that not only sharpens our view of the past, but also raises current questions about identity and attribution in the field of tension between art and science.
More about Johannes Weilandt
Johannes Weilandt, born in 1991 and raised in Halle (Saale), lives and works as a visual artist in Berlin and Halle Saale. He is a member of BBK-Berlin, VGBildkunst and the International Heiner Müller Society. From 2011 to 2017, he studied Fine Arts | Stage and Costume Design at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. He also studied drawing and painting in Prof. Mark Lammert’s class at the Berlin University of the Arts during a guest semester in 2015 and drawing, painting and transmedia at the University of Arts in Belgrade in 2016. In 2022, he earned his master’s degree under Prof. Else Gabriel and Prof. Peter Schubert at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. In 2023, Weilandt collaborated with the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine at the UKE Hamburg as part of his residency scholarship at the Künstlerhaus Lauenburg. In 2024, he conducted research in the Meckel Collections of the Institute for Anatomy and Cell Biology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He has received several scholarships for his work, including from the Kunstfonds Foundation. His drawings have also been featured in various exhibitions, publications and collections, including together with Elske Rosenfeld at the festival ‘wohn_komplex, Festival zu 60 Jahre Halle Neustadt’ in 2024, which is sponsored by the Saxony-Anhalt Art Foundation.
You can find out more about Johannes Weilandt and his works here: https://www.johannesweilandt.de/
@_AMK
