Blue – A Conversation on Collective Osmosis
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Symposium in English
I try to live in black and white, but I'm so blue.
Billie Eilish quote from a Frequencies canvas, Potsdam 2026
Saturday, June 20, 2026
1–7 PM
With the exhibition Collective Osmosis Oscar Murillo has transformed the indoor and outdoor spaces at DAS MINSK into the site of a lived experiment in community and exchange. A series of lectures, talks, and performances titled Blue – A Conversation on Collective Osmosis opens a space of resonance with the topics touched upon in the exhibition, such as permeability, exchange, transformation and migration. A particular focus of the symposium is the colour blue: in the work of Oscar Murillo and Claude Monet, and in the contemporary artistic practices of others.
RESERVE YOUR SEAT HERE
The symposium is free of charge. Registration is required for all participants.
Note: The event language is English.
Program
Welcome
Anna Schneider
13:00 | Keynote
by Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro
Introduced by Anna Schneider
13:45 | Reading Performance
"Flight through Territories – A Reading of Flight Drawings"
with Alice Vilanculo
A performance by Oscar Murillo
14:00 | Savory Break
Cafébar HEDWIG
14:45 | Panel Discussion
The Colour Blue in Contemporary Artistic Practices
with Robin Rhode & Göksu Kunak
Moderation: Zippora Elders
15:45 | Keynote
The History of Blue Pigments: Between Matter and the Immaterial
by Evie Hatch
Introduced by Daniel Milnes
16:30 | Sweet Break
Cafébar HEDWIG
17:00 | Music Performance
Blues Redux
by Lamin Fofana
18:00–19:00 | Get-Together
with Collective painting, activation of the oven sculpture Brenda by Gabriel Chaile and BBQ on the terrace
Reading Performance
From 14.03.2026 renowned contemporary artist Oscar Murillo will take over the spaces at DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam with his project "Collective Osmosis", a celebration of mark-making creating moments of exchange between his paintings, installation works, and the work of Claude Monet. For the symposium, Murillo presents the performance "Flight through Territories – A Reading of Flight Drawings".
Panel Discussion
Göksu Kunak will speak as part of the panel discussion about the color blue in the context of the exhibition REMAINS at EBENSPERGER, approaching it as both an art-historical and emotional surface. Referencing Yves Klein, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and Derek Jarman’s Blue, Kunak will explore blue as a space of immateriality, estrangement, desire, disappearance and bodily trace.
Robin Rhode will outline his work in the context of Potsdam’s multilayered Prussian history as part of the panel discussion, drawing on the symbolic resonance of Prussian blue as both a historical pigment and a cultural signifier. The deep blue tones associated with Potsdam’s royal palaces and decorative arts become, in Rhode’s practice, a contemporary language of movement, memory, and spatial intervention. Robin Rhode will reference the writer May Ayim as an important inspiration for his use of the colour blue. Drawing on Ayim’s reflections on Black identity, memory, and visibility, Rhode connects the symbolic history of Prussian blue in Potsdam with contemporary questions of space, movement, and representation.
Keynote Evie Hatch
In her keynote titled “The History of Blue Pigments: Between Matter and the Immaterial,” Evie Hatch traces the color blue: Blue is a colour associated with the celestial and the immaterial, yet the production of blue pigments has depended on intensely physical processes: the extraction of lapis lazuli, the cultivation of indigo, cobalt mining, and modern industrial chemistry. The industrial expansion of synthetic blue pigments in the nineteenth century transformed how colour could function in painting, shaping the dissolving surfaces of Claude Monet's Water Lilies and, later, the collaborative and participatory works of Oscar Murillo. Across these different contexts, blue emerges at the threshold between material substance and immaterial experience.
Music Performance
In his performance Blues Redux, Lamin Fofana revisits segments from the albums Blues, The Open Boat, and Shafts of Sunlight. It is an act of invitation, thinking with ravines and rivulets in an open-ended improvisatory performance-installation with fragments and debris from extended studio sessions. It is a disruption of the linearity of historical time, what historian Robin D. G. Kelley refers to as “blues time”; it is simultaneously in the moment, the past, the future, and the timeless space of the imagination.
Biographies
Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro is a writer and editor. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin in 2018, and recipient of the Anne Waldman Fellowship at Naropa University in 2019. Her essay El nuevo sublime was a finalist for the National Essay and Criticism Award in Colombia in 2019. Castro is the editor of Dream of Europe: Selected Seminars and Interviews, 1984–1992 (Kenning Editions, 2020), a collection of previously unpublished lectures by Audre Lorde, which was shortlisted for the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism in 2021. She is also the author of Another Sun, a book-length conversation with the activist and political theorist, Françoise Vergès (Divided Publishing, 2026). In 2025, Castro joined the Artistic Team for documenta 16.
Zippora Elders is the General & Artistic Director of the Dutch national photography museum, the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, a curator, writer and art historian. Previously, she was Senior Curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Head of the Curatorial Department & Outreach of Gropius Bau in Berlin, Director of Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Co-Curator of Sonsbeek20-24 in Arnhem and Curator of Foam Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, amongst others. She chairs or participates in the Supervisory Boards of a number of cultural organizations and regularly serves as advisor and juror for international platforms.
Lamin Fofana is an artist and musician currently located in New York. His music contrasts the reality of our world with what’s beyond, and explores questions of movement, migration, alienation, and belonging. Fofana’s overlapping interests in history and the present and his practice of transmuting text into the affective medium of sound manifest in multisensory live performances and installations featuring original music compositions, field recordings, and archival material. Fofana hosts a monthly radio show on NTS Radio.
Evie Hatch is a London-based writer, art historian, and artist whose work centres on the histories of pigments, especially within the context of European painting. She studied Fine Art Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts and History of Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her digital content explores the material and cultural histories of artists' colours, and she is the author of Pigment Stories, published in 2025.
Göksu Kunak was born in 1985 in Ankara. She is an artist, researcher, and writer based in Berlin. Drawing on influences such as Arabesk culture, late modernity, and orientalist discourse, Göksu Kunak critically examines processes of self-Orientalization as well as strategies of camouflage, self-censorshipand speculative fiction through performance and installation. In 2025, Kunak was awarded the Akademie der Künste Kunstpreis (Berlin Prize for Art). Kunak`s work has been presented internationally at institutions and platforms including Performa Biennial, New York; Neue Nationalgalerie, Sophiensaele; deSingel Arts Center, Antwerp; Kaaitheater, Brussels; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, among others.
Oscar Murillo, born 1986, La Paila/Colombia, has developed a multifaceted and ambitious practice that spans painting, collaborative projects, video, sound, and installation. His work probes ideas of collectivity and shared culture, demonstrating a commitment to the power of material presence alongside critical perspectives on contemporary society. Murillo’s large-scale participatory commission, The flooded garden, inspired by the work of Claude Monet was on view at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall during the summer of 2024. In 2023, Murillo was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Westminster and in 2019 he was one of four artists to share the prestigious Turner Prize.
Robin Rhode lives and works in Berlin since 2002 and was born 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa. The Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist engages in a variety of visual languages such as photography, performance, drawing, painting, and sculpture to create arrestingly beautiful narratives that are brought to life using quotidian materials such as soap, charcoal, chalk and paint. Robin Rhode has had major solo and group exhibitions around the world such as Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, NY among others. Furthermore, Rhode has participated at 51st International Venice Biennale, Italy, Biennale of Sydney, Australia, The New Orleans Biennial, USA, Moscow Biennale, Russia, Yokohama Triennale, Japan, Taipei Biennale, Taiwan, Busan Biennale, South Korea.
Alice Vilanculo is a Portuguese-Brazilian theater and TV actress based in London. Her credits include: "Cheaters" (BBC), "Feel Good" (Netflix), the Olivier-nominated play "Rosmersholm" (West End), and the upcoming "The Wanted Man" (Apple TV). Alice Vilanculo collaborated previously with Oscar Murillo in 2022 on his exhibition in Venice, at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, titled "A Storm is Blowing from Paradise."
Further Information
When
Sat, June 20, 2026, 13–19 Uhr
Length
50 min guided Tour plus breakfast
Language
German
Meeting point
Foyer
Cost
The symposium (excluding exhibition) is free of charge. Registration is required for all participants.
If you wish to visit the exhibition beforehand (optional), please purchase a ticket separately.
Booking
On site or online
DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam
Max-Planck-Straße 17
14473 Potsdam
DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam is a 5 minute walk from Potsdam main station.
From Berlin: S-Bahn S7
From the airport: RB 22 and S7
***Please note that due to ongoing construction work, regional train services between Berlin and Potsdam are currently limited. We recommend travelling by S-Bahn and checking the latest connection information before your journey to Potsdam.