What influence do cultural representations have on the creation of reality and historiography? Which voices are missing from Eurocentric narratives and museum presentations? And to what extent does fragmented information about the past shape our understanding of the present—and the future we imagine?
As part of a collaboration between the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and the Kunsthalle Mannheim (Luisa Heese), students in the seminar “Frameworks of Fiction” led by Prof. Charlotte Eifler critically and artistically examined the collection in order to explore these questions.

The starting point is Édouard Manet's historical painting L'exécution de l'empereur Maximilien, which captures a moment of colonial violence between the French Empire and the Mexican Republic. From there, the students developed artistic interventions that recontextualize works in the collection—they open up alternative readings, question established narratives, and continue the collection from a contemporary perspective.

From November 5 to 11, 2025, they will transform the Kunsthalle Mannheim into a space for intervention: past and present will meet at various locations throughout the museum. Works from the 19th and early 20th centuries will be recontextualized through the students' own works in the media of moving image, sound, interactive installation, textiles, and sculpture.

The collection intervention “Frameworks of Fiction” will open on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 7 p.m.

Speakers will include Luisa Heese, Deputy Director and Curator of Contemporary Art and Sculpture, Kunsthalle Mannheim, and Charlotte Eifler, Professor of Mixed Realities in the Media Art Department, Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

This will be followed by a guided tour of the various stations of the intervention, during which the students will present their works: India Marie Adams, Alejandra Miranda Janus, Sunmi Kim, Anna Manankina, Johanna Namakonov, Luis Rüttinger, Antonia Sanden, Isabel Elisabeth Winter.