Eis Cafè Martini

The exhibition, opening to the public on 30 May at 11 AM, introduces the theme of self-censorship through an intimate and familial research that intertwines memory, migration, belonging, and the transmission of identity.

With Eis Café Martini, Matete Martini takes as her starting point the history of her own family, who left Italy after the Second World War to build a life and working path in Germany connected to the restaurant industry.

The project moves through the context of the Ruhrgebiet and across different generations, between paternal narratives, domestic memory, and the childhood gaze of someone who grew up within an extended, hardworking, and deeply close-knit family community.

Through photography, painting, and archival materials, the artist does not aim to reconstruct an orderly genealogy or a linear chronicle of events. Rather, she focuses on the traces, gestures, and forms of continuity that survive over time: the rhythm of daily work, the symbolic weight of a name, the sense of belonging, and what is passed on without necessarily passing through words.

As the artist states:

What is it, and where does it come from, this almost blood-deep resistance to doing and being? This need to carry forward a surname, a name, a tradition, a place? I have always been fascinated by this strength: not being afraid, not even in the face of danger. Never feeling inferior, not even in a country where one is a guest – together with other guests. What emerges is a narrative in which identity is not explicitly asserted, but takes shape through recognition: in origins, in the body, in family memory, and in what is inherited even before it can be understood.

Opening Hours:

- The exhibition will be open from May 29 to July 3, 2026

- From Tuesday to Friday

- From 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Entrance