Säulenordnung

Säulenordnung (Classical Column Order), a solo exhibition by artist Daphne Schüttkemper, examines how architecture and art in public space do not merely represent power, but exercise it.

Schüttkemper takes architectural elements from the urban landscape that symbolise power and translates them into her own sculptural works, interrogating their effects. At the centre of her practice stands the column (Säule): far more than a structural element, in the Western context they are omnipresent as an aesthetic symbol. The Greek Classical column order — Doric, Ionic, Corinthian — was established as a standard since the Renaissance, rooted in the idealisation of Greek antiquity as the supposed cradle of civilisation. In the German context, this architectural language became particularly potent: from Prussian Classicism to the monumental buildings of the Third Reich, it served to legitimise state authority, to solidify a claim to permanence and legitimacy cast in stone. Yet the column, as Schüttkemper shows, barely stands on its own: this order is built on violence, on the cultural justification of colonial rule, which cast non-European populations as “barbaric” and framed European colonisation as a civilising mission.

In Germany, order (Ordnung) is not merely an aesthetic ideal, but a moral and civic duty. It is not theoretical; it is a daily practice, so normalised that it becomes common sense. Schüttkemper draws attention to what this process renders invisible: lions that, as symbols of colonial exoticism and strength, silently guard the entrances of public buildings; eagles that, despite their history of political instrumentalisation, endure as a national symbol on facades and in public spaces to this day. Symbols of power so familiar they go unnoticed, so unquestioningly present that they seem to require no explanation. Yet normality is not neutrality. The columns stand. Unremarkable and unmoved.