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Laman Ismayilova

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The exhibition "Familiar Strangers: On the Mutations of the Everyday" was held in Berlin as part of the HOLOBIONT 2026 project and the 15th Berlin Art Week. The exhibition was curated by Azerbaijani curator Zuleykha Ibad and featured works by artists Ewelina Węgiel, Anna Raczyńska, and Viktor Petrov.

The exhibition took place at RWK Studios by 3CA, an arts and production complex located in Berlin's Zehlendorf district and occupying an area of approximately 16,000 square meters, according to a statement from the project's curator.

At the heart of the exhibition are ordinary objects from everyday life that we gradually stop noticing: furniture, curtains, kitchen utensils, car windshields, and even a coal mine. The artists invite viewers to look at these objects from a new perspective and consider them as carriers of personal memory, social relationships, and historical change.

The title of the exhibition refers to the concept of the "familiar stranger," introduced by American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. The term describes people whom we regularly see but never interact with. The curator extends this idea to everyday objects as well. Many things are constantly around us, yet over time they become almost invisible.

A central work in the exhibition was Bulgarian artist Viktor Petrov's Some Missing Parts (2026). It is a 1:7 scale model of a post-socialist residential building made from Märklin metal construction pieces. The model also recreates a courtyard, a garage, and a playground. The perforated metal elements make the walls transparent, allowing viewers to explore the connection between private life and architectural memory.

Ewelina Węgiel explores informal forms of knowledge, folk stories, rumors, and narratives that circulate outside official history. In her video installation Coal (2024), a coal mine in the Polish city of Bełchatów acquires its own voice and tells its story in the first person. Her textile work Fireplace (2025) is made from threads from a closed sewing workshop, fragments of old curtains, and soil taken from a drainage ditch.

Anna Raczyńska alters the form, material, and scale of everyday objects, transforming their visual language into something abstract and unsettling. In leave everything behind (2019), a car windshield becomes a boundary between two socio-economic spaces. In the short 3D animation Elsewhere (2020), the artist explores the experience of the Polish diaspora following 2004. The work raises questions about migration, labor, money, and the sense of belonging.

Curator Zuleykha Ibad noted that the exhibition focuses on the theme of proximity. It explores what it means to live side by side with people we never speak to and to use objects that we almost never take the time to look at closely.

"Three artists from Poland and Bulgaria, and an Azerbaijani curator. The four of us are united by a state of being between different places and cultural contexts. The exhibition does not explain migration. Instead, it draws on a state of perception that emerges through migration: everything is almost the same as before, but nothing completely corresponds to what it once was," Ibad said.

Zuleykha Ibad was born in Baku in 1998 and works as a curator between Berlin, Baku, and Budapest. She specializes in contemporary art from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Ibad holds a bachelor's degree in scenography and a master's degree in curatorial studies. She is also a co-founder of the Berlin-based curatorial platform Luna Serpent.

The exhibition "Familiar Strangers" was one of seven independent exhibitions presented by the 3CA platform as part of HOLOBIONT 2026. The project explores how familiar objects, spaces, and everyday situations change in meaning when a person finds themselves in a new social and cultural environment.