Heiliger Scholarship: Emma Zimmermann

In honour of the sculptor Bernhard Heiliger, the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation awards an annual scholarship to sculptors from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) and Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, where Heiliger taught. This goes in combination with a public presentation of the Scholarship recipients’ works in Heiliger’s former studio in the East Wing of Kunsthaus Dahlem. This year, Emma Zimmermann, who studied at UdK Berlin with Prof. Christine Streuli, was selected as the recipient of the scholarship. Emma Zimmermann’s practice engages the symbolism of fences and spikes. They mark ownership, exclude or enclose, and shape space. Their works inhabit this ambivalence, inviting viewers into a physical relationship: to enter, hesitate, or remain at the threshold. Fences and borders define our present; questioning them is a shared task. Central is not only the viewers’ experience. In the lengthy, physically demanding process of making, Zimmermann inscribes themself into the work. By adopting materials and techniques historically coded as masculine, their fluid body becomes tangible – something to grasp.