Over the course of a year, photographer Maria Sturm explored garage yards in Chemnitz - places that are more than just parking spaces for cars. Using her analogue medium-format camera, she took portraits of the people she met during her visits.
From 17 January to 26 April 2025, the resulting 164 portraits of Chemnitz garage users will be shown in a decentralised exhibition in 50 shops in Chemnitz. The exhibition locations are shown on the digital map(karte.chemnitz2025.de) and also on the exhibition flyers, which are available in all participating shops. Garage users will introduce themselves and their garages in a digital audio walk.
The "Members' Assembly" exhibition with works by photographer Maria Sturm is one of the central projects in the main #3000Garages project in Chemnitz 2025. The #3000Garages project presents the approximately 30,000 garages in Chemnitz, most of which were built collectively and by the residents themselves during the GDR era, as living archives, creative spaces and meeting places. In various artistic projects over the course of the Capital of Culture year, the individual stories of the garage users will be creatively transformed against the backdrop of Chemnitz's city history. Festivals, workshops and art events activate the garage courtyards as socio-cultural community centres. Martin Maleschka's "Spare Parts Warehouse" exhibition with artefacts from Chemnitz garages is currently running at the Museum of Saxon Vehicles until the end of 2025.
The portraits of the garage users by Maria Sturm each tell individual stories: of encounters, conversations and exchanges that often led to a friendly connection. This has resulted in a photographic community portrait of the city of Chemnitz, which is visible and accessible in many shop windows throughout Chemnitz city centre until April.
It is worth exploring many of the exhibition locations. Visitors who visit five or more of the participating shops can collect stamps and pick up a #3000Garage multitool. The exhibition flyer also serves as a stamp card. The multitools can be collected at the Hartmannfabrik, the Chemnitz 2025 visitor centre.
Romanian-born photographer Maria Sturm (*1985) initially studied photography at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences before completing her MFA in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design on a Fulbright and DAAD scholarship. She portrays people in their socio-cultural environment with a particular sensitivity for the cracks and gaps in the carefully selected excerpts of reality. The fragile strength of her protagonists comes to light in a way that is both delicate and relentlessly expressive. Maria Sturm's work has already won several international awards, been published and shown in exhibitions.
At the opening of Chemnitz 2025 on 18 January 2025, the team of the main project #3000Garagen will present further projects in the Capital of Culture year at the programme showcase in Chemnitz City Hall from 13:20 to 13:30. Afterwards, there will be an opportunity to take part in a short guided tour of the exhibition in Chemnitz city centre.
