Gönül Sen-Menzel: Live Painting at “Kunst(t)räume” in Chorweiler

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Chorweiler. After first taking place in 2012, the art project “Kunst(t)räume” recently entered its second round.

This year it runs under the motto “Chorweiler Blooms”. Various topics are to be the focus: not only actively reshaping and helping to shape urban living spaces, but also art education and discovering exhibition opportunities in the district. From the very beginning, “Kunst(t)räume” has been accompanied and supported by district mayor Cornelie Wittsack-Junge.

It was she who opened the project, which runs for several weeks, at the City Center in Chorweiler. “The project has created a framework for different activities. Besides a painting event at the City Center, there is also the plan to decorate high-rise facades – it is meant to highlight and promote the positive changes in the district,” Wittsack-Junge explained during an art event last Saturday. The “revival” of the dreary-looking facades has already begun at Florenzer Straße 32 – further facade projects will follow.

In keeping with the motto of the event and the spirit of the concept behind “Kunst(t)räume”, flower appliqués are being applied to the high-rise facades. The motif of “blooming” will thus be visible on the walls as a seemingly naive symbol – and perhaps points to a slow process of change that can only be fully ensured through the active participation of the people of the neighborhood in cultural life.

The painting activities at the City Center, meanwhile, are aimed primarily at children from daycare centers and schools – and are organized by the artists’ group ChorweilerART. Until October 12, the artists Claudia Wolff-Dürr and Ewa Salwinski are running painting games and art activities for the kids.

Together with ChorweilerART, the artists’ group “Köl-Tür” and the dancer Miriam Pilgram, an interesting art event combining performance, dance and painting was also staged as part of “Kunst(t)räume”. The painter Gönül Sen-Menzel drew inspiration from the music and from Pilgram’s dance and movement on Pariser Platz. Sen-Menzel was positioned in the district town hall, where Josef Cali’s stone sculptures are also on display in the foyer. Visitors could thus admire the inspiration and how it was transformed “live” on site.

Many interested people stopped and took photos – the performance in public space was apparently a welcome change in the cityscape for many people in Chorweiler. For Sen-Menzel, however, such an event is nothing unusual given her creative work – though some residents of the neighborhood will of course have seen it somewhat differently. “I actually always paint with music. I have done events like today’s many times, often combined with live jazz,” said Gönül Sen-Menzel, whose art association “Köl-Tür” is based not far away in Weiler, opposite the Simultanhalle.

The high-rise facade project, meanwhile, is being supervised by Bernward Prinz and Gerd Maulbecker, members of “ChorweilerART” – and will continue in the coming days and weeks. Things are happening in Chorweiler, and it will be exciting to see what else the active artists will make “bloom” in the district in the near future. “We are glad that we have managed to bring artists and cultural workers under one roof in this way and hope that this is only the beginning,” said the artist Ewa Salwinski during the performance of her colleague Sen-Menzel, which, incidentally, bore the title “hareket – Pictures in Motion”.

Original caption: Inspiration in public space: Miriam Pilgram danced on Pariser Platz.