Yana Tsegay’s solo show takes its title from the Amber Room, built in 1701 by Andreas
Schlüter for the Prussian King Frederick William I in the Berlin City Palace. This magnificent
room, which carries the will for representation, donation, spoils of war and robbery, has
been relocated several times and considered lost since the end of World War II. In 2003 it
was faithfully reproduced in the Catharine Palace in St. Petersburg. Cultural scientists are
still trying to trace the myth of the Amber Room.

Yana Tsegay’s floor work Amber Plate (2019) is composed of window frames with flyscreens
painted with melted sugar and complemented by objects cast with sugar and resin. Their
recurrent materials, including fur, leather, pigments and ceramics, are organic and natural
materials which are part of the collection of materials from art history that revolves around
the formation of myths. The canvases stand on self-built pedestals and feet and by this
they take on the character of objects themselves and become part of the installation. They
structure and define the exhibition space, as well as a fur string stretched across the room
as a barrier tape. The gestural abstraction of the paintings (Amber Panel I-III, 2019) seems
primordial. The almost archaic composition of the pictures is determined by formlessness
with earthy colors and contains borrowings from prehistoric cave painting, which – with
the Lascaux Caves – is considered the origin of art. „Prehistoric“ or „primitive“ are terms
that are used by the supposedly Western world to talk about „the other“ and to
demonstrate superiority.

Thus, in terms of cultural history, Yana Tsegay spans the arc from that first form of artistic
expression to institutionalized and representative so-called cultural treasures such as the
Amber Room, which always raise the question of cultural appropriation, expropriation, the
appropriation of raw materials, and demonstrations of power. These questions are
intensified in Yana Tsegay’s self-referential performances – with the aim of dissolving the
privileges and hierarchies of the institutional contexts in which the artist works.

Miriam Bettin
Assistant Curator, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne

The Amber Room

Take 3D Tour