The Columns Gallery Singapore is pleased to present Rooms, a solo exhibition by Lina Kim (b. 1965 - São Paulo), marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Singapore.

Lina Kim (b. 1965 - São Paulo ) Lives and works in Berlin

Rooms Sperenberg, Framed Print Diasec, 2006

In Rooms, Lina Kim photographs abandoned interiors once occupied by Soviet military forces in former East Germany, south of Berlin. Stripped of human presence, these spaces exist between history and silence. Peeling walls, exposed cables, broken windows, and traces of former habitation remain as quiet evidence of lives once lived and systems once imposed. Whether shaped by war, political collapse, or neglect, the rooms carry the lingering weight of time.

Rooms Wittstock, Framed Print Diasec, 2006

Throughout the series, windows connect interior and exterior worlds. Inside, the architecture appears exhausted and abandoned; outside, nature quietly reclaims the landscape. Vegetation grows freely beyond the walls, contrasting with the rigid geometry and faded authority of the interiors. The photographs were produced over several years between 2003 and 2006, across changing seasons, reinforcing the sense of slow transformation and disappearance.
Kim’s images move beyond documentary photography. While grounded in reality, the works evoke the atmosphere of abandoned film sets or theatrical stages after the actors have departed. The rooms feel suspended between presence and absence, intimacy and detachment, history and oblivion. Layers of paint, stains, and deterioration become visual records of time itself.

Rooms Wittstock, Framed Print Diasec, 2006

Rather than focusing on nostalgia or political narrative alone, Kim examines how architecture absorbs human experience and ideological history. Her work reflects on the afterlife of modern civilization, revealing how spaces once shaped by power and control eventually return to silence. In Rooms, abandoned interiors become poetic and psychological landscapes where memory continues to echo long after history has moved on.