Public Talk with Nelly Habelt, Sargon Khnu and Thuy Tien Nguyen, moderated by Franziska Nori

18.05.2025, 15:00

Nelly Habelt’s video works are powerful and poetic. She works in urban environments, often at night. Habelt uses city architecture as a platform for figures she performs with her own body. The artist suspends herself at the height of street lamps or floats upside down beneath bridges. She remains completely still while the camera moves around her, making her appear as a living yet frozen sculpture in public space.

Sargon Khnu has created a life-sized white sculpture: a kneeling male figure. Mounted on the wall are five low reliefs made of limewood, developed from digital drawings and produced through digital milling techniques. The staging of the body in the age of digital imagery, and the questions surrounding gender, role clichés and power, are central themes in Sargon Khnu’s work.

Thuy Tien Nguyen’s practice often begins with the characteristics of everyday objects. She questions their narrative associations and the meanings they carry within societal codes. For the Frankfurter Kunstverein, she produced three sculptures in Vietnam that resemble furnishings typically found in executive offices: a filing cabinet, a desk, and an office chair. In doing so, she explores how, across all cultures and throughout history, the display of power has been cultivated through the arrangement and design of spaces and their interiors.

At the public discussion, moderated by Franziska Nori, you will have the opportunity to meet three of the twelve participating artists from the exhibition And This is Us 2025 – Young Artists Based in Frankfurt and engage in dialogue with them.

Admission to the public discussion is €5 plus entry to the exhibition. The talk will take place in English and German.