Art in the City - 30 Years of Villa Aurora
by Clara Becker
Art Takes Over Berlin’s Urban Space: To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Villa Aurora artist residency, the project Art in the City returns for its second edition, bringing five striking new poster artworks into Berlin’s public space. From October 6–19, works by Edgar Arceneaux & Zora Arceneaux, Janine Eggert, Erik Göngrich, Lukas Glinkowski, and Wiebke Loeper will be on view at key locations across the city, including Kottbusser Tor, Kottbusser Damm, Potsdamer Straße, RAW Area, and Alexanderplatz.
Titled Art in the City, the project reflects the rich diversity of Berlin and Los Angeles. Each artwork engages with the unique characteristics of different neighborhoods, building bridges between the two metropolises while addressing pressing socio-political themes. The six public installations capture the texture of urban life and offer new perspectives on themes such as community, beauty, aging, and freedom of expression. The goal: to make art visible and accessible—beyond the museum walls and white cubes, right in the heart of the city’s everyday life.
Following the successful debut in May, Art in the City once again pushes the limits of the traditional poster format. This new edition not only reflects on the cultural dialogues between Berlin and Los Angeles but also introduces two interactive pieces that invite direct participation from the public.
At Kottbusser Damm, Los Angeles–based artists Edgar & Zora Arceneaux present Colors of My Home, a work that asks: What colors remind you of „home“? On a black scratch-off surface, viewers uncover hues like “Wine Red,” “Sea Foam,” or “Midnight Purple.” By gently rubbing away the applied surface, the underlying colors are revealed. As passersby contribute, a collective, multicolored portrait of “home” gradually emerges, reflecting the diversity of the neighborhood.
On Potsdamer Straße, Janine Eggert’s Googie Horizon assembles eight examples of futuristic Googie architecture photographed in Los Angeles into a single, imagined skyline. This postwar American style once symbolized optimism, mobility, and consumer culture. Eggert’s montage functions simultaneously as archive and fiction—an urban silhouette that never existed, yet evokes the promise of a visionary everyday world.
At the RAW Area, Erik Göngrich’s ART HEALS presents art as a cycle. His poster brings together images of cars and wildfires with the words ‘ART HEALS.’ In contrast to smoke and destruction, the question unfolds whether art itself can be understood as a cycle of repair. Here, recycling takes shape not only as an ecological gesture, but also as a cultural and social necessity—one that makes our bond with the present moment tangible. Göngrich’s work asks: Could art itself, understood as a process of re-responsibility, be a healing act?
For the residents of Kreuzberg, Lukas Glinkowski presents Connect the Dots, an interactive artwork built from more than 10,000 numbered dots. The piece traces back to his 2019 residency at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, where he experienced the Pacific Palisades wildfires up close. Dedicated to firefighters past and present, the piece weaves natural forces, human response, and personal memory into a shared visual narrative.
At Alexanderplatz, Wiebke Loeper’s Photographs, Berlin 1996/97 reflects on the rapid transformation of post-reunification Berlin. Her images capture a moment when iconic sites such as the TV Tower or Kino International were threatened with demolition—and when her own childhood high-rise building near Alexanderplatz disappeared. Both personal records and collective memory sites, Loeper’s photographs bridge past and present while tracing the complex layers of urban life
The works by all six artists will be on view across Berlin from October 6-19.