Mitgift

Noysky Projects presents Mitgift, a curatorial collaboration with Frontviews (Berlin) and Ojo Arte (Mexico City), hosted by S-Gallery in East Hollywood. The exhibition is part of B-LA-M, a three-year exchange program designed to deepen relationships between the independent art communities of Berlin, Los Angeles, and Mexico City, with 14 participating galleries in Los Angeles. Mitgift is the third and final installment in a trilogy of exhibitions organized by the Noysky–Frontviews–Ojo curatorial cohort, following Birthmark (Berlin, 2024) and Nevus (Mexico City, 2025).

The German word Mitgift is most commonly translated as "dowry", but its meaning extends well beyond that. Literally understood as "something given along with you", the word carries multiple associations. Mit means "with", while Gift shares an etymological root with the English word "gift", yet in modern German the word Gift alone means "poison". The term is paradoxical, offering that which is bestowed may be both blessing and burden.

Mitgift considers the things we inherit, including our bodies, histories, cultures, beliefs, and social conditions, as well as the elements of identity we may choose to embrace, reinterpret, or reject. The exhibition explores inheritance not as a fixed entity, but as an active process that oscillates between control and abandon.

Across painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media, the participating artists examine cultural, political, personal, and ideological forms of inheritance. Their works reflect on how identity is shaped through lineage, migration, technology, and collective experience, while questioning how social networks can compress unique lived experiences into reductive representations of identity.

Featured artists include Carsten Becker, whose photographs investigate transgenerational trauma; Colleen Hargaden, whose sculptures respond to the evolving politics of technology; Sean Noyce, whose sculptural work examines folk magic of the American West; Azadeh Shladovsky, whose sculptures explore the dualities of the Iranian-American experience; Katya Usvitsky, whose work considers the body, replication and regeneration; and Beth Davila Waldman, whose paintings examine the impact of sociopolitical forces on the landscape.

Rather than presenting inheritance as something merely received, Mitgift asks how inherited identities are revised. In an era when personal histories are filtered through aspirational digital content, the exhibition considers what cannot be reduced: the memories, contradictions, and cultural legacies that make us human.