Post Grounds – A collaboration by students of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) in the Art Collections of Ruhr University Bochum together with its Art History Institute.
Once traversed, it unfolds like a maze – a city within a city. It‘s a modern place of post-war architecture that, at its center, between concrete and art-in-architecture, houses the Art Collections of Ruhr University Bochum.

In the exhibition Post Grounds, students of the KHM enter into a dialogue with many of the works from these collections. Coming from the urban stage seminar, led by Prof. Mischa Kuball (Public Art), they bring their own artistic positions to the collections of the RUB, entering into a dialogue with its exhibits. The participants view the collections as a living, breathing space where past and future come together.

The exhibit grants insights to places that are easily overlooked and with performances, works in public spaces and interventions within the collections, tries to relate them to the rest of the campus. Thematically, the works range from thoughts on the physicality of bodies, to architectural violence and to questions of remembering. The Art Collections, places of art historical theory and museological praxis, are dynamically enhanced by the multifaceted views of the students.

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Post Grounds – Eine Kooperation von Studierenden der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) in den Kunstsammlungender Ruhr-Universität Bochum mit ihrem Kunstgeschichtlichen Institut.

Betritt man den Campus der Ruhr-Universität Bochum wirkt er wie ein Labyrinth, eine Stadt in der Stadt, ein Ort moderner Nachkriegsarchitektur, in dessen Zentrum sich – zwischen Beton und Kunst am Bau – die Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum befinden.

In der Ausstellung Post Grounds bringen Studierende des Seminars urban stage unter der Leitung von Mischa Kuball (Public Art) ihre eigenen künstlerischen Positionen ins Campusmuseum ein und treten mit Exponaten der Kunstsammlungen in einen Dialog. Die Beteiligten verstehen die Sammlung als einen lebendigen Ort, an dem Vergangenheit und Zukunft aufeinandertreffen.

Die Ausstellung öffnet Blicke in Räume, die sonst leicht übersehen werden und tritt mit Performances, Arbeiten im öffentlichen Raum und Interventionen in den Sammlungen in Bezug zum Campus. Thematisch changieren die Arbeiten von Beschäftigung mit 
Körperlichkeit über architektonische Gewalt bis hin zu Fragen des Erinnerns. Die Kunstsammlungen, Ort der kunsthistorischen Lehre und musealen Praxis, werden in ihrer Funktion dynamisch um die vielfältigen Blickwinkel der Studierenden erweitert.
 
Dialogische Wege durch Post Grounds
Wie entsteht Kunst im Spannungsfeld von Architektur, Körper und Erinnerung?
Bei der dialogischen Führung durch die Ausstellung Post Grounds kommen Studierende der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) und des Kunstgeschichtlichen Instituts der RUB miteinander – und mit euch – ins Gespräch.

Gemeinsam führen sie durch die Ausstellung und eröffnen Einblicke in künstlerische Arbeitsprozesse, Sammlungsinterventionen und kuratorische Entscheidungen.
Ein Rundgang von Studierenden für Studierende – offen, diskursiv und auf Augenhöhe.

📅 04. Februar 2026, 14 Uhr
📍 Kunstsammlungen der RUB / Campusmuseum


07.

Choose your own conqueror (CYOC)


Alexandra Lex Nikitina
porcelain, LED light
four pieces 25 x 30 x 8 cm
four pieces 8 x 6 x 10 cm

2026






















CYOC (Choose your own Conqueror) is an installation based on a death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte, rendered in translucent porcelain. The masks are set in a row like soldiers awaiting orders, contrasting the serene facial expression of a dead man hovering from the wall at the height he used to stand at when he was alive - 168 cm. At the appropriate height below each face, a bare flaccid penis of the same material. Through the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, the artist examines contemporary global political powers and societal turbulences. This current cultural climate, along with its informational mystification and personality cults, in many ways resembles the informational warfare Napoleon used. He retains his personality cult post mortem. His corpse is taken apart for souvenirs. His penis, hands and feet were cut off by an attending physician. At the moment, his penis is in the possession of an American heiress. The disinformation, started by Napoleon himself, lives on. Is it his death mask, or was the fake returned after it was stolen? Was his penis cut off, or was it replaced with the penis of a servant? 

Who ordered the physician to cut the body parts of Napoleon, and why? The blurred borders between superstition,religion and politics lead to a complete mythologization of the figure of the erstwhile tyrant of Europe - a meme, a cake, a psychiatric condition, a clown, a saint, whose dead body can be used as a personal keychain. For good luck.



BIO


Alexandra Lex Nikitina (*1989, Ukraine) of mixed Russian-Ukrainian origin.
Pronouns it/its. Former journalist and a writer, published in Saint-Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv, Odessa, Shanghai media and publishing houses. It has been studying media arts since 2022. Its artistic practice is focused on malleability of information, particularly through the tool of historicism, and research on the importance of material for the aesthetic experience. Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.



CONTACT

Portfolio.lex.com
@just.lex.n
lexxx3000@proton.me