Designed in the 1960s as a utopia of social housing, the Cologne district of Chorweiler is today mostly perceived as a problem neighbourhood: High unemployment and migrant rates and a skyline of often run-down high-rise buildings characterise the cliché. In the middle of Chorweiler-Zentrum, in the creative workshop Outline e.V., children, youths and young adults live and experience hiphop and graffiti culture. In this way, they raise their voices, get involved and shape their district.
In the summer of 2022, the Cologne photographer Damian Zimmermann, who himself comes from Chorweiler, met and photographed almost 50 children and young people from the Outline environment. The results are quiet portraits of mostly introverted people in places that are important to them or where they like to spend time, but which as far as possible do not reproduce the common clichés that people have of the district. The Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln presents these portraits in a multimedia installation with graffiti, texts and music videos, among other things, which were created or started in the creative workshop under the direction of Puya Bagheri.
The project connects to the work of Käthe Kollwitz and her commitment to socially disadvantaged people and is at the same time the start of a new cooperation between Outline e.V. and the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.
An exhibition by Outline e.V. in cooperation with Karl-Arnold-Stiftung e.V.,
Supported by Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung