For Kunstherbst 2023, US artist Mark Dion has created a work of art from objects in the Stadtmuseum Berlin's toy collection. With hundreds of exhibits, his installations in the Museum Nikolaikirche not only explode space and time, but also take a critical look at children's toys themselves.

For the exhibition, Mark Dion spent months researching the collection of around 70,000 objects, one of the largest in Germany. The result is a labyrinth of board games; animals that climb a pyramid; vehicles of all kinds that engage in an imaginary race on a circuit; and other installations. With hundreds of exhibits, they not only explode space and time at the Nikolaikirche Museum, but also take a critical look at children's toys themselves.

Since the late 1980s, Mark Dion has been intensively concerned with the question of how knowledge is created and passed on in museums, always with an alert eye for systems of exploitation and oppression. After all, toys, which are mostly designed by adults for children, always convey ideas about people and their world. In dealing with toys, children practice certain role models, and through toys they are specifically taught themes or ideologies.

Translated with DeepL