A show and performance by Signe Mähler and William Cody Maher – 3.7.-2.8.2025
Curated by Chiara Valci Mazzara
The works of German photographer Signe Mähler and American poet William Cody Maher are presented in the joint exhibition Pandora’s Box – An alternate dramaturgy of the past and the present – or for a dystopian world. The show brings together images and sceneries, poems and life narratives, introducing a world in which the personal and the universal intersect and mirror one another.
Through photography, video, poetry and live performance, the artists explore how the story of a couple can echo both global events and private memories—using the past as a lens through which to understand the present. Their work weaves intimate conversations and anecdotes into surreal, dramatic, ironic, and at times absurd depictions of life’s struggles and wonders.
Personas, costumes, and scenes are invented that, in Mähler’s photographs, blur the line between dream and reality—offering an alternative narrative of a shared life and a poetic reading of the world. Maher’s poems, presented as Timelines, trace conflicting truths and unexpected turns within the personal story while resonating with broader collective experience.
Signe Mähler, born in 1947, is a photographer based in Berlin. William Cody Maher, born in San Francisco in 1950, is a writer and performance artist also living in Berlin. In addition to their individual practices, the two have collaborated on two documentary films made in the United States: Along Troubled Roads, examining the political climate prior to Obama’s election, and Down Southern Roads, which looks at the American South following Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. They also produced a short film on the writer and translator Carl Weissner, titled Mit ‘nem dicken Hals schreib ich am besten!.
The show is supported by the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung.
Kunstverein am Rosa Luxemburg Platz
Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 45, Berlin – Mitte
July 3 – August 2 2025
Opening hours: Thu – Sat. 2 -6 PM
