Niina Lehtonen-Braun

Rather than reinventing the wheel, Ulu Braun re-envisions the structural potentiality of the brick, in this revisionist fable of mankind's urbanization of our planet. Employing playful and visually dense digital collages, Braun's associative tableaux collate an 'alternate' vision of our world, where nature invades the urban (and vice-versa). We're transported by a comforting narrator through post-apocalyptic, post-capitalist habitats, where the material co-exists with the metaphysical, the literal alongside the figurative (soap-bubble buildings stand alongside ruined churches turned car dealerships). Architektura echoes our civilization's childlike ingenuity in creation and destruction, as we question the inheritance we pass on to our future generations.

The magical-realist camera follows the trials and encounters of Jonathan as he attempts to fulfill his mother’s final wish: that her ashes be laid to rest at Alexanderplatz, Berlin. Carrying her blue urn and searching for a suitable location, he attempts to gain permission, assistance, and sometimes merely empathy from his fellow citizens.