Opening – 26 APR 2024, 6-9 pm

Berlin Straße, Angharad Williams’ second exhibition at Schiefe Zähne, explores the urban and social fabric in her chosen home of Berlin. Recognizing the street as a place of communal organization outside of established structures, Williams tunes into the vibrant pulse that unfolds on her daily commute between home and studio.

Berlin, a city still marked by its Cold War division, seems for many to hold promise and prospect. As its vast unclaimed spaces are becoming increasingly enclosed, what was long neglected is now fiercely fought over between global money and local resistance. Williams traces the forms of subaltern social organization that emerge on the ground in the city, like the collection of Pfandflaschen (deposited, reusable bottles) as a form of para-economical income.

Taking advantage of the domestic setting of the gallery which is located on the second floor of a typical Berliner Altbau, Williams divides the space into interior and exterior  spheres. This spatial intervention mirrors Berlin’s inherent dialectic, oscillating between public and intimate, collectivity and isolation, or even the paradox that unfolds in the uncharted openness of the city; what for some means utopian, creative freedom is for others a harsh reality of the daily grind. In new sculptural works, painting and photography, Williams captures the poignancy of dreams and fantasy amidst the detritus of everyday life, making candid propositions of alternative forms of exchange, leveraged from imagination, poetics and speculative fabulation, beyond established governing institutions.