Kerstin Honeit: Panda Moonwalk or Why Meng Meng Walks Backwards

On view 1 - 30 April 2020

Since 2017 the two Giant Panda Bears Meng Meng and Jiao Qing have been hired out by China to the Berlin Zoo for millions of Euros. Unfortunately for the Zoo this profit seeking attraction did not work out as planned – in fact it worked backwards. Meng Meng, the female Panda will only walk backwards – probably protesting against her imprisonment. Surprisingly the international press takes a different, sexist route and suggests that Meng Meng’s behaviour relates to the fact that she has not yet bred and is seeking attention. Kerstin Honeit’s video aligns Meng Meng’s protest with other performances of protesting bodies using movement in public space to address grievances.

Kerstin Honeit (*1977 in DE) studied fine arts and stage design at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art from 2003–2009. She has been teaching together with Bjørn Melhus at Kunsthochschule Kassel between 2014-2019. Using video works, performance and installations in her artistic research, Honeit examines worlds of hegemonic image production in the media of information technology and pop culture. Intervening at the boundaries of representation and reception, she questions the construction of social norms. Most recently, her works were shown at Kunsthalle Rostock (2019); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2019); Off Biennale Cairo (2018); Videoart at Midnight, Berlin (2018); n. b. k. Berlin (2018); Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2018); La Centrale, Montreal (2018); Bärenzwinger, Berlin (2018); Schwules Museum, Berlin (2018); Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin (2018); Fajr International Film Festival, Teheran (2018); Berlinische Galerie (2017); SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen (2017).