Fantasies of “the Other”

In 19th-century Europe, colonial expansion reinforced the urge to set out into the wider world. Travel and reports about distant lands gave rise to fairy-tale-like, seductive, and at the same time hierarchical racist and sexist fantasies that materialized in interior design.

In Stuttgart, too, the exotic remains inscribed in the cityscape to this day – sometimes Chinese or Indian, African or Oriental. The Wilhelma, the Linden Museum, the Chinese Garden, but also the rides at the Cannstatter Wasen or the teepee in the Winterdorf now seem so familiar that their colonial origins remain obscured. Elsewhere, the ideological problems have been built over, so that the Oriental Büchsenbad, Nills Tiergarten, and the Völkerschau have disappeared from collective memory.

The exhibition traces exoticism in Stuttgart and contextualizes it in terms of its urban and architectural relevance. The deconstruction of its architectural features and origins of meaning invites us to critically question the influence of historical and contemporary exoticism on established patterns of perception. The illusion of the “other” is to be unveiled as a fantasy created in Europe that continues to have an effect.

Opening: February 25, 2026, 7 p.m.