Opening
14.11.2026, 18.00–21.00

In a deliberate mistranslation of a line from Nino Ferrer’s 1975 hit Le Sud the title of Basma al-Sharif’s solo exhibition at soft power turns the song’s melancholic sigh for a lost paradise into a sharp political reckoning that refuses nostalgic amnesia: Es war eigentlich nie besonders gut.

In two video installations, the exhibition exposes how both integration policy and the neo-colonial promise of progress function as tools of ideological conformity that dictate conditional belonging. Al-Sharif’s mistranslation prompts us to look past the comforting facades of immediate havens and recognize in them the dangerous choreographies of denial.