The new commission at the staff entrance is created by the Munich-based artist Gülbin Ünlü. Her work, titled (n)orient, proposes a speculative future where technology and identity coexist in more fluid, interconnected forms. This spatial installation unfolds as an investigation into techno-orientalism, a critical take on the appropriation of imagery in visual culture, and the possible lost futures.
Ünlü works with a range of mediums, weaving together motifs and interlacing painting and prints into layered images that take on sculptural forms and performative possibilities. Her work often reveals layers of haunting presences, inviting viewers to explore an imaginative landscape shaped by echoes of past imaginaries and futures yet to come. With this work, she creates the post-sci-fi (n)orient, as a playful language to articulate futures that resist singular interpretation and embrace more nuanced, transcultural perspectives. Layered with references to Asian mythologies, sci-fi narratives, and fragmented cultural memories, Ünlü crafts a rich tapestry of meanings that linger between the familiar and the other.
With this series of site-specific commissions, we open up our essential space of daily operation for encountering artists’ work. Renewed each year, we invite artists from Munich to respond to this space and to conceptualise a new work. This year, Ünlü transforms the passage into a liminal space. You are invited to envision other worlds viewed from a new perspective—post-sci-fi realms where narratives of alienness are reclaimed and redefined.
Curated by Lydia Antoniou.