Carla Åhlander and Gernot Wieland

Growing up in small-town Austria in the 1970s involved not only boredom but also much latent violence. Gernot Wieland broaches this experience in the BAU’s upper “police apartment,” which was clearly last occupied by a family with a child. In collaboration with Carla Åhlander, he proposes an “archeology of absence,” where the lack of material evidence or remains in an archeological site can be just as significant as their presence. The various elements of the installation reflect upon intersections between Wieland’s own childhood and an imagined one, which has left few traces in the apartment.

Carla Åhlander (1966, Lund, Sweden) is an artist who frequently works with photographic series, which she uses to provoke inquisitive looking. By exploring both the structures of power and those of seemingly trivial things, her quiet images lend new meaning to their subjects, revealing memories and histories occluded by surface appearances. Åhlander’s work has recently been shown at KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen (2024 and 2022); Belmacz, London (2024, 2022, and 2021–22); B-LA-M Festival, Berlin (2024); HilbertRaum, Berlin (2021); and SCOTTY, Berlin (2021), among others. Åhlander lives in Berlin.

Gernot Wieland (1968, Horn, Austria) is an artist who works with text, video, and lecture performances to subtly voice the complexity of life in our secular society. His works have recently been shown at Berlin Biennale (2025); KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen (2024); Argos Centre for Audiovisual Art, Brussels (2023); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2023); KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2022); and Torrance Art Museum (2022). Wieland’s film The Perfect Square (2024) was selected for the 74th Berlinale as well as First Look 2024, Museum of the Moving Image, New York. He lives in Berlin.