Koios

Koios was developed by the Belgian-German artist Felicitas Rohden as a commission from the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb (Federal Agency for Civic Education bpb). The title comes from the titan Koios, who as a counterpart to Atlas personifies the axis of the world around which the sky revolves, according to the Ancient Greeks. This participatory installation raises questions about our own perspective and motivates us to reflection on the acquired, normalized gaze that we direct at ourselves and the world around us. The aesthetic of multiple meanings and ambiguity plays a central role.

This three-part object consists of a map of the world that is divided into twenty-four meridian strips that are double-sided but can be wiped away, a set of stamps, and a poster. The latter has instructions as well as an illustrated overview of the continents and islands. The installation offes a haptic appeal that points to the mutability and complexity of what we perceive. The forms of the islands and continents are highly abstract. The stamps respond th the creative composition of plants, animals, people, and objects with which the strips can be decorated. The goal of the work is to treat questions of belonging, visibility, relation, and arrangement and to work out in a low-threshold way thematic complexes such as categorizations and hierarchies, heteronomy and autonomy, exoticism and Eurocentrism in the present, past and possible future.