Duane Linklater. Cache

For his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, Duane Linklater is developing a site-specific installation that raises central questions about the handling of memory, collection and museum responsibility. The starting point is the term cache – a storage facility as practiced in indigenous cultures in Canada, and today also known as a digital form of storage.

Linklater, Omaskêko Ininiwak of the Moose Cree First Nation, transforms this idea into sculptural scaffolding constructions. These industrial modules carry paintings, objects and personal items – not for immediate appropriation, but as storage units that elude the public’s grasp. The exhibition links Indigenous perspectives and practices with current issues of cultural belonging, the circulation of knowledge and the colonial legacy of Western institutions.

In interaction with a collection presentation co-curated by the artist, resonance spaces are created between past, present and future. The result is a multi-layered examination of questions about collection, memory, preservation and museum responsibility: who decides what is preserved? What do things tell us about cultural identities – and about institutions? What stories circulate between people, objects and places? In the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, past and present thus meet – in a living repository of collective negotiation.

The exhibition is conceived in collaboration with the artist, the Vienna Secession and the Rudolfinum Gallery, Prague.