I Remember How it Feels to be Made of Flesh
Ida Sophia
Ida Sophia's first solo exhibition in Berlin traces how pain and endurance are passed down through matrilineal lines.
What happens when the thorn turns against the rose?
In I Remember How it Feels to be Made of Flesh, Australian artist Ida Sophia brings together installation, performance, and sculptural works that trace how pain and endurance are passed down through matrilineal lines. From her grandmother’s and mother’s rose gardens, the thorn emerges as a recurring figure — protective and wounding, resilient yet restrictive.
A Tyranny of Small Decisions is a walkable field of resin thorns: 45 rose-thorn stems form a pathway that grows denser as you move through it. It reflects how small decisions compound over time, entangling us in situations we never anticipated — yet there is always an exit, an opportunity to look back and choose another path.
In the durational performance To Work at Wreckage, the party becomes a social methodology for examining how we hide what we endure. Hospitality conceals quiet violence; through shifts in atmosphere the audience is led from heightened celebration to vulnerability and release. Across the exhibition, Sophia reveals the patterns of compliance and endurance that shape intimacy, memory, and social expectation.
The exhibition was Ida Sophia’s first solo show in Berlin, curated by Marcela Villanueva.
Public programme
- Thursday 11 September 2025, 18:00–21:00 — Opening and performance of To Work at Wreckage.
In conversation
For Karne Archivos, Karne Kunst’s documentary interview series, Ida Sophia talked about the exhibition, the symbolism of the rose thorn, and the challenge of condensing a durational practice into a three-hour performance.
Although very autobiographical in inspiration, I understand that while the details of my story are unique to me, the themes I’m talking about are universal.
Her work invites audiences to approach difficult subjects — regret, disconnection, pain — in ways that are, in her words, “confronting yet gentle and conciliatory.” By putting a microscope on interpersonal relationships and their ripple effects into broader society, it asks how we work through pain together, what it means to endure, and how vulnerability can become a form of resistance — an invitation for audiences to take these themes away and think about them over time.
Read the interview at Karne Kunst · Watch on YouTube
Credits
I Remember How it Feels to be Made of Flesh was a Berlin-based project by Karne Kunst gUG, under the artistic direction of Marcela Villanueva , and was presented at Bardo Projektraum, Berlin.
Artist: Ida Sophia. Curator: Marcela Villanueva. Installation: Carolina Boettner. Production assistant: Elisa Basilissi. Communications: Myriam Martínez.