That’s how nice it was at the Kusama Kids Studio!
You didn't make it to the Kusama Kids Studio in the Gropius Bau - or you want to relive the wonderful memories of your visit? Here are a few photos by Mathias Völzke from the Kusama Kids Studio as well as a report by Ilka Lorenzen on Ephra's program on the occasion of the Kusama retrospective.
“A great exhibition and thanks to the fantastic Kids Studio fun for the WHOLE family - Thank you very much!"(L. Sixtus)"Mega colorful!" (anonymous)"Another great offer for children! We do hope the same for the next exhibition in the Gropius Bau!" (Guido and Fanny)"PS: If there's a studio like this again, we'll come along to the exhibition next time too!" (The children)
The Kusama Kids Studio
A follow-up report by Ilka LorenzenThe guestbook of the Kusama Kids Studio is full of enthusiastic entries, photos of tours and workshops speak for themselves, the personal feedback as well! And this despite the fact that the Corona pandemic threatened to prevent many things. Nevertheless, the Kids Studio was able to open, creativity and gathering were possible and enrichingly beautiful – even with masks! Especially now it was and still is necessary to set such expressive signs: Children are important and they are seen! Children are the future!
The program accompanying the exhibition “Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective. A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe” was a crowd favorite among the younger ones and thus a success. Moreover, an important and wonderful experience for all involved! This was the first time that the Ephra team around Ephra founder Rebecca Raue organized an individual children's program for an exhibition in the Gropius Bau. Among other things, a complete room was made available in the exhibition building for this purpose. Apart from a reference to the artist Yayoi Kusama, there were no design specifications – so there were no limits to the imagination. Ideas, visions, images could bubble, sprout and flow, and they did – for weeks. The result is an aesthetically highly appealing, colorful, airy and inspiring space for romping, painting, crafting, dressing up, dreaming, dancing, listening or pausing. All materials, furniture, fabrics and design, in their explicit beauty, once again clearly underline the appreciative attitude towards children and young people. Round shapes and mirrors could not be missing in a Kusama studio, of course. In the reading corner, for example, there were comfortable round velvet stools to sit on, round mirrors to paint on and admire oneself adorned one wall, and likewise round listening booths hung from the ceiling down into the room – all in the animal design of Marie Parakenings, who also designed animal costumes for Ephra and illustrated the booklet accompanying the exhibition. Another highlight of the room was definitely the floor, which could always be redesigned into its own large-scale collaborative artwork. The motto: everything is color, everything is art – the children were allowed to paint and stick on the floor to their heart's content, while listening to the audio pieces, being inspired by the Kusama animals hummingbird, octopus and chameleon, or simply drawing on it without a care in the world. But first things first:
The accompanying booklet – The Kusama Kids Tour
"What a wonderful Kids Room to the enriching exhibition! The booklet for the kids is great, big kudos to the organizers!" (Hazel)
Who is Yayoi Kusama? Why does she paint dots all the time? The core team of Ephra – Maxi Böhme, Michaela Englert and Rebecca Raue – has developed a Kusama Kids Tour for the exhibition, which picks up children from themselves, relates to their world in terms of questions and attitude and at the same time conveys biographical and artistic information about Kusama. Animals and nature have always played a formative role in Kusama’s life – certain animals were also intended to create an emotional connection between children, the artist and art. Hummingbirds, octopuses and chameleons were able to assert themselves thanks to salient characteristics and became an important element that permeates the entire children’s program.
A high-quality accompanying booklet, artfully illustrated by graphic designer Marie Parakenings, guides children and young people playfully through the exhibition page by page. It is free of charge and available in German, English and Turkish. Since Yayoi Kusama was already fascinated by dots as a child and these are known to be found everywhere in her art - from canvas to furniture to people - the dots also become the basis for the color code to be created in the booklet: "Want to learn more about art and about yourself? Then answer the questions in this booklet and go in search of the color codes in the exhibition to create your own personal Kusama Code.” The questions do not ask for concrete knowledge, but rather interweave the children's lives with the art world of Yayoi Kusama. Important – anyone and everyone can answer these questions: “What do you like to do most all day?” or “With which superpower would you change the world?”. Nine answer options are available, the most individually suitable one is marked with one of the three-colored stickers, the Kusama code for which can be found on the floor in the respective exhibition rooms - so there are also detective tasks during the exhibition tour! Nine dots should be found and stuck on, which finally results in the personal Kusama code for each child: "Of which color do you have the most dots?" – Yellow? You are a hummingbird! Blue? You are the octopus! Green? You are a chameleon! Each of these three animals has its very own connection to the artist Yayoi Kusama – the children can learn more about this, for example, in the audio plays in the Kusama Kids Room, in which the animals introduce themselves!
The audio tracks
Children love to listen to stories – special voices and sounds instantly transport them to other worlds and stimulate their thoughts. Who wouldn't want to float weightlessly through the air like a hummingbird? Or be able to transform and camouflage like a chameleon? Eight-armed like an octopus, you could set things in motion! These three Kusama animals come to life in the poetic audio pieces by audio journalist Ilka Lorenzen, set to music with the voices of actors* Wanja Mues, Max von Pufendorf and Regina Lemnitz. In their tirelessness, their versatility, their strength or far-sightedness, the hummingbird, the octopus and the chameleon are reflected in the personality of Yayoi Kusama. They tell the children about their worlds of air, water or plants, impress them with their special abilities or ask the young listeners what they have in common. And if they haven't already become these animals themselves in their imagination, the children can put on matching animal costumes in the Kids Studio!
"Beautiful!" (anonymous)
The Workshops
Ephra has offered special workshops and guided tours of the exhibition for daycare centers and school classes, inviting them to immerse themselves in the world of the artist Kusama, but above all to deal with their own thoughts and feelings and finally to become artistically active themselves in the Kusama Kids Studio - to fill the space with ideas and images. Creative boxes with animal stencils, mirror pens or refrigerator poetry are available for this purpose – depending on the age group, these materials and offers were used differently. Since Corona made these analog workshops impossible at times, Ephra unceremoniously developed an additional online program – a digital journey of a somewhat different kind! In online workshops, school classes, children and young people could interactively discover Yayoi Kusama as a person and her art. Inputs alternate with games and creative exercises, some of them on the screen in the group, some analog with pen and paper.
The Kusama Kids Specials
The end of the exhibition and also the successful concept of the Kusama Kids Studio were duly celebrated with very special offers for children and young people on site. Leisurely reading tours with the narrator voices of the Kusama animals, whirling dance workshops or contemplative meditations were on the program. The versatility of the Kusama Kids Studio could once again be experienced intensively and used collectively.
CONCLUSION
Openness, versatility, curiosity, courage, creativity, togetherness and togetherness – these are just a few but very important components in the implementation of such a complex and successful children's art education program. As always with Ephra, the focus was on the children and young people themselves. They were free to use the Kusama Kids Studio as they wished, to move and develop within it, to discover its possibilities and obviously to love them. The staff members of the Ephra mediation team, who were always present on site, were always open to questions or invited and encouraged them to try things out and be creative. They always communicated with children and young people at eye level!
"It was the best thing here at the museum, THANK YOU!" (anonymous)
Employees of the Ephra team remember special experiences
“A little girl in a yellow hummingbird costume sits on the floor and paints intently and completely with herself; she seems to be absorbed in her fantasy and hums contentedly to herself. Meanwhile, her little brother is doing gymnastics all over the room, lying down on the carpets under the listening booths, making faces in the mirror, climbing onto the stools and looking at all the visitors with wide eyes. When the workshop begins and all visitors are asked to leave the room, the girl insists on staying and asks her mother to register her for the workshop so that she can stay longer. These siblings obviously felt extremely comfortable, opened up the space completely freely and according to their personal needs, that's how it should always be!” (Ilka Lorenzen)
“A pair of siblings shyly hide behind their father. Quietly, the two children begin to draw in their circle on the floor. They look around the room and observe the other children at the mirrors. Slowly, their tension eases and they begin to talk. What color is an octopus and how many arms does it have? They discuss, paint, glue and cut. The octopus takes shape. When they are finished, everything is explained to dad in detail and a photo is taken so that they can show it to mom later. Proud and self-confident, the two leave the room!” (Carlotta Behrendt)
“It was especially great to see that all the kids - no matter what age - found something fun to do in the Kusama Kids Studio. At one point, a family with 3 kids came in. The biggest one was already a teenager and sat bored on a stool at first. The smallest one lay down under the listening pieces and built castles with the word woods. The middle one drew something on the floor. The two smaller ones were busy until at some point the teenager also sat down on the floor and started to paint. By the end, he was so engrossed that he didn't even want to leave because he wasn't finished.”
“I was surprised that hardly any of the visitors regretted that they were not allowed to take their handicrafts with them. Only very rarely was something created to take away; for most of the visitors - big or small - it didn't occur to them to want to take anything away at all. The space as a moment of creativity was completely sufficient to be able to process what they had seen in the exhibition.” (Maxi Böhme)