"In Paradise, the Snow Falls Slowly" will be the poetic exhibition title of the upcoming retrospective of German-Iraqi artist and animal liberation activist Lin May Saeed (1973-2023) at Berlin's Georg Kolbe Museum . The artist died on August 31 - two weeks before the opening of her exhibition - at the age of only 50.

In her highly topical work, the sculptor has long explored the complex interconnections between humans and animals. Starting with the non-human animal, Lin May Saeed addressed stories of subjugation, liberation, and the harmonious (yet utopian?) coexistence of animals and humans, reflecting at the same time on environmental change due to human influence and global species extinction.

The easily procurable but environmentally harmful material Styrofoam, which was one of her preferred artistic working materials, gives her sculptures of animals and humans a melancholy character - not only because of their fragility: it also serves as a metaphor of a fatal entanglement.

As part of documenta 13, Lin May Saeed and other artists participated in the installation "The Worldly House: An archive inspired by Donna Haraway's writings on multi-species co-evolution", which the Danish artist Tue Greenfort realized in the former swan hut in the Auepark. For the duration of the exhibition, the fairytale-like cabin became a contemplative archive of the human-animal relationship and a symbolic interface between humans, animals and nature.

Lin May Saeed. In paradise the snow falls slowly
A Dialogue with Renée Sintenis
September 14, 2023 - February 25, 2024
at the Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin