09/10/2025, 6:00 pm,

we as water, Book Launch and Reading with Leila Orth

, Atelier 4.1

In her book we as water, Leila Orth deals with the question of what places of remembrance there are and can be. Building on her many years of artistic engagement with memorials, she uses the book to search for places, far removed from national memorials, that lead to a possible transnational form of remembrance.

Orth understands commemoration as a multi-layered process in which not only one moment is remembered, but in which several memories, images, conflicts and feelings come together. Instead of erecting more monuments made of concrete and stone, she is interested in the gaps in between, in which memory is created and which make remembrance possible. Her focus is on the Elbe island of Finkenwerder in Hamburg harbour, where she herself grew up. From there, Orth develops a multidirectional dialogue in which different people's perspectives on water as part of their history are incorporated. Water has the power to connect us, reflects the relationship between past and present and provides space for narratives that have previously been overlooked.

The book presentation at Kunsthalle Münster, Atelier 4.1 is part of Leila Orth's start3 scholarship and is sponsored by Volksbank im Münsterland eG.