RUDERAL COMPANION
listed entities overgrown by wandering species 

Sitespecific Work with Isabel Motz for Blauregen 

curated by Lizzy Ellbrück & Louisa Raspé

August 2024, Berlin

Details of Solidago canadensis, Canadian goldenrod, on recycled tiles.

Ruderal Companion is a site-specific work for the one-day exhibition ‘Blauregen’ in a suburban villa with a listed garden. After the death of the artist, owner and resident of the house Magaret Raspé, the ruderal plant Canadian goldenrod grew in the garden. Ruderal plants are the primary vegetation in areas characterised by an intermediate state, a phase of upheaval. In addition to sandy, nutrient-poor slag heaps, they also inhabit the rubble sites of derelict buildings.

They grow on these anthropogenically created soils until the natural balance of the site is restored and thus more stable species re-establish themselves. They accompany the transition from the old utilisation of an area to a newly grown organism. Ruderal Companion is a reminder in a vacant residential building of the processes of change in organic matter as a companion to new conditions and their dynamic, emotional presence.
The work relates to Donna J. Haraway‘s concept of ‘companion species’ and forms of remembering and being in living and dying together.

Photos by Lizzy Ellbrück

RAY, ROCK, ROWAN (Being a Photograph)

Scenography for Susanne Kriemann at Camera Austria 

with videos by Aleksander Komarvo

Curated by Margit Neuhold

March 2025, Graz

In Ray, Rock, Rowan (Being a Photograph) at Camera Austria, the scenography supports and connects a sequence of research works by Susanne Kriemann.

An unstable wooden structure—previously used in other contexts—partially covers the window side of the space, holding fragile autoradiographs and casting shadows on nearby works when sunlight passes through. A piece of yellow silk, placed between the double façade windows, subtly colours the light in one corner, altering the appearance of a nearby green-toned print. Tired wall panels stacked on the floor, supporting hung prints on the wall, refer to shifting landscapes, growth on slag heaps, and the geological layers of mountains, all in constant motion.

Three reading blobs, made from standard chairs covered in geotextile—a material used in uranium-mining regions for soil rehabilitation—offer a place to sit and explore related research materials. Light panels have been repositioned to reflect changes in the height of the space, adding subtle shifts in perspective.The result is a spatial composition that invites close attention, mirroring the subtle entanglements explored in Kriemann’s research.

Photos by Markus Knottendorfer

HEY MONTE SCHLACKO DEAR SLAGOR

mosses cohere metallurgical rind, bees mining slag

Scenography & Production for Artist in Residence Susanne Kriemann at Universität Siegen, MGK Siegen 

with Video installation by Aleksander Komarvo and Co-Production by Lena Fließbach

October 2024, Siegen

Hey Monte Schlacko, Dear Slagorg transforms the former department store into an immersive installation, wrapping the building in layers of large-format prints on textiles and papers. The photographs by Artist in Residence Susanne Kriemann, taken at different times of the year, capture the slow growth of mosses and lichens on slag, revealing the interwoven relationship between metallurgy and botany. The presentation references the building's architectural structures, with polygonal textile prints stretched across niches and in front of shop windows. The Béton Brut building evokes the texture of slag, while historical images and recent footage expand the dialogue.

The installation merges remnants of industrial production with the shifting consumer culture in city centres, creating a hybrid environment—Slagorg. In the evening, projecting from inside the abandoned building, video works by Aleksander Komarov complement the photographic works, highlighting the ruderal plants in Kharkiv’s war-torn landscape. Through these layers, the work blurs boundaries between plant life and human intervention, connecting the city’s industrial past with its evolving present.

Photos by Philipp Ottendörfer

SENSORY FRIENDS, LITTLE COMAPNIONS
taking a Friend to an exhibition

Public Engagement tools for WIELS

ongoing, Brussels

Friends are designed for WIELS’ youngest visitors to carry with them as companions during their visit.These soft companions offer a playful way to explore the exhibitions.

Photos by Raquel Echevarría, Emilio Azevedo

(INTERVIEW)

TACTILE FLIP BOOK

Public Engagement tools for WIELS

June 2024, Brussels

A booklet for endlessly flipping through structures that recall cracked glass and characteristic fracture patterns found in everyday flat glass or caused by mechanical impact. Produced in context of the exhibition ‘Crack, Nerve, Boogie, Swerve: The Archive’ by Alexis Blake at WIELS.  

Photo by Raquel Echevarría

LUPIN, FOUGÈRE, GENÊT

Skeletal Images of a Vegetal Body: On Nuclear  afterlife

Scenography for a work by Susanne Kriemann - L'Age Atomique at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

Co-research Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou
Curated by Julia Garimorth & Maria Stavrinaki

October 2024, Paris

Lupin, fougère, genêt is a continuation of Susanne Kriemann’s research on uranium mining in Thuringia and Saxony in Limousin, focusing on re-naturalisation processes and the role of supporting plants. 

The spider-legged, skeletal scenography is inspired by fences that now enclose vast areas of the former uranium mining sites in Limousin—barriers that remain long after extraction has ended. These structures also recall the spiders that crawl on the ground in these abandoned areas.

This structure holds prints of lupin, fern, and broom, arranged in overlapping forms. Their shifting visibility from different perspectives evoke the invisible nuclear afterlife embedded in the terrain. The skeletal framework, stripped of flesh, speaks to both the fragility and resilience of life in a landscape shaped by extraction and its lingering consequences.

FOREST, FRST, T LIKE TEAMWORK
intimately linked to our historical trail, they archive, they forest vegetation, they oaks

Scenography for the work by Susanne Kriemann
Into The Woods at Kunsthaus Wien, 2024 curated by Sophie Hasslinger
Dinge, die wir voneinander ahnen at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, 2022

The honeycomb structure serves as a scenographic element for displaying archival prints from Mihai Oroveanu’s collection, which were the starting point for Susanne Kriemann and Christina Morno Garcia’s research. These materials informed their collaborative work forest frst t like teamwork, a critical investigation into deforestation across Europe, with a focus on the intensive logging practices in Romania’s primary forests. The project examines the relationship between fast furniture consumption and environmental degradation.

At the core of the installation are four large visual poems—silkscreen prints created using pigments extracted from discarded IKEA furniture, specifically a table, and printed on waste paper. The honeycomb cell structure, taken from the inner material of the table itself, underscores the work’s engagement with the material consequences of consumer culture.

AN INVITATION TO AN EXHIBITION IN A LAUNDRY

Spilling thresholds, liquid arrangements, leaking remembrance

Scenography & Curation

April 2023, Karlsruhe

Washing laundry gathers repetitive actions, circular movements, and spaces for tactile knowledge. The wall drawings on the exhibition space, in the backyard, and in the laundry room, depict the movements of washing hands and serve as a reminder of the work of women* who washed laundry. They accompany the exhibition like the textiles that were passed from hand to hand. The exhibition took place in a laundry room and backyard in Karlsruhe, previously used for private purposes. Over 18 days, the programme highlighted the everyday manual labour of washerwomen and the societal stigma they face.

Through the act of laundry, the project explored the intersection of care work and wage labour. Grounded in research, the programme shed light on the city‘s structure, untold narratives, and blending of social roles and spaces. Information from archives and discussions were compiled into three leaflets: remembering, working and coming together. The exhibition was conceived through and with contributions from friends and artists associated with the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, who responded to the research and incorporated the metaphor of washing. The exhibition evolved from personal dialogues, creating additional connections and references.

With works and contributions by Jaya Demmer, Hanna Franke, Hanna Müller, Natalia Kesik, Isabel Motz, Miki Feller, Marie Faass, Vera Gärtner, Nina Overkott, Laura Haak, Corinne Riepert, Juliana Vargas Zapata, Leonie Mühlen Michel Dachner, Josefine Scheu, Nis Petersen, Moritz Schottmüller, Mona Altmann, Timotheé Charon, Sven Krahl, Nina Overkott.
Supported by Prof. Celiné Condorelli, Prof. Susanne Kriemann, Prof. Dr. Matthias Bruhn, Hanne König, Dr. Susanne Asche, Communitiy-Toolkit-Workshop, HfG-Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe City Archive, General State Archive Karlsruhe, Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany

Photos by Mascha Dilger, Jaya Demmer, Nis Petersen

3 PRINTS ON THE FLOOR
Drawings on insulation layers

Site specific work & Signaletic with Isabel Motz for Munitionsfabrik - Ausstellung zur Geschichte eines ungeheuren Raums at HfG Karlsruhe

April 2022, Karlsruhe

The exhibition Munitions Factory - Exhibition on the History of a Monstrous Space sheds light on the history of what was once the ‘largest munitions factory in the world’. It illuminates the transformations of this ‘monstrous space’ and scrutinises the development of the site of the former munitions factory up to the present day. The research for 3 Prints on the Floor deals with remembering and forgetting this history and the preservation of the building. The site-specific work, which is based on archive material, questions the temporary and concrete forms of visible remembrance and the elements that are subject to active preservation. Above all, it questions which forms, structures and materials are protected as monuments in paragraphs and what is the subject of remembrance. 3 prints on the floor of the listed building outlast the exhibition and footnotes refer to existing archive holdings, thus providing access to the histories. The 3 screen prints will remain until they fade due to daily erosion.

INTERTUESDAY

foremost digital space for exchange, organised together with Matthias Bruhn, Constanze Fischbeck und Susanne Kriemann at HfG Karlsruhe

2020-2022, Karlsruhe

Intertuesday served as a space for transdisciplinary dialogue and exchange. Each session brought together students, teachers, and guests to share their ongoing projects, works, and research. The evenings were structured around three 20-minute contributions, presented in various formats—lectures, talks, conversations, interviews, or video clips.

INVISIBLE BODIES

Research Project

June 2020, Karlsruhe

The performance Invisible Bodies took place in a private backyard in Karlsruhe. As the invited audience listened to a narrator through headphones, red fabrics were hung on  washing lines. These fabrics kept slipping off and had to be rehung repeatedly. They created a physical barrier between the listeners, only to become transparent again as they dried quickly in the sun. The text they were listening to was based on research into textile industry in Wuppertal and the female* workers at the dawn of industrialisation. It addressed the invisibility of their bodies in relation to contemporary patterns. A fictional narrator had observed a situation to which she* had no access. Silently, she* began asking herself questions, unable to voice them aloud. The performance explored modes of visibility and engaged with surprising moments of encounter—not only with oneself, but also with other participants and the surrounding environment.

Photoy by Jaya Demmer

WWWE - World Women Wrestling Entertainment

Scenography for Hanna Scherwinski at Stephanien Brunnen Karlsruhe

April 2019, Karlsruhe

WORLD WOMEN WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT is a performative wrestling show in public space. The show creates contexts and associations that negotiate the practice of wrestling as a performative cultural technique while also examining the role of the angry woman - both in the context of the male-dominated, sexualised history of wrestling itself and in everyday social life in general. The scenography takes up the controversial history of the Stephanien fountain in Karlsruhe‘s city centre and playfully combines it with the typical elements of a wrestling match. (images)

Photos by Michail Rybakov, Klemens Czurda

1t QUARZSAND 0,1-0,2mm

Spacial installation at HfG Karlsruhe

April 2018, Karlsruhe

The installation includes a ton of quartz sand hanging in thin underwear stretch fabric. The fabric drapes over a 6x6m traverse frame at a height of 4m. Visitors are invited to step onto the sandy area and get in contact with the material. Only by touching the fabric bumps or moving through the space sand trickles through the fabric to the ground and to the bodies.The research contains an ambivalent relationship to sand as well as the invisibility and ghostly appearance of the material. Sand, in everyday life appears as an omnipresent but inconspicuous raw material. The universal utility of sand bestows it with economic value, while its shifting grains quietly carry echoes of time, memory, and transformation.

Photos by Dominic Thiel

Gently observing spatial dynamics, scenographer leia walz weaves together research into hidden structures within shared spaces with narratives drawn from intimate exchanges. Her scenographic practice emerges through close collaboration and a thoughtful engagement with materiality, texture, and histories of production—emphasising the sustainable use and transformation of found forms and structures.

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During her studies in scenography, exhibition design, and curatorial practice at Karlsruhe University of Arts & Design, Leia Walz co-curated and organised INTERTUESDAY, a platform for interdisciplinary exchange. After graduating in 2023, she gained experience within WIELS Artists in Residency Programme.
Her scenography’s in collaboration with artist Susanne Kriemann were exhibited at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe (2021), the Kyiv Biennale (2022), KunstHaus Hundertwasser Vienna (2024), Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (2024), Camera Austria (2025) including a public installation in Siegen (2024).
Leia Walz collborated with performance artist Katharina Senzenberger at HORST Festival in Brussels and assisted Céline Vahsen in her studio. She was responsible for co-organising  AFFILIATE, an exhibition space initiated by WIELS Artists in Residency Programme in Brussels city center. As part of WIELS Audience Engagement Programme, for the past year she has been designing and producing objects that aim to offer children additional sensory and especially tactile experiences related to respective exhibitions.

leiawalz.com was last updated on May 6th, 2025

Graphic Design by Juliane Schmitt

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