In 19th-century Europe, colonial expansion intensified the drive to venture into distant lands. Travel accounts and reports from far-flung regions sparked fairy-tale, seductive fantasies that were simultaneously hierarchical, racist, and sexist—fantasies that materialized in spatial design.

Stuttgart's cityscape bears the imprint of the exotic to this day—whether Chinese or Indian, African or Oriental. The Wilhelma, the Lindenmuseum, the Chinese Garden, as well as fairground attractions at the Cannstatter Wasen or the tipi in the Winter Village have become so familiar that their colonial origins remain obscured. Elsewhere, ideological complications have been built over, causing the Orientalist bath house, Nill's animal garden, or ethnological exhibitions to fade from collective memory.

The exhibition Fantasies of "the Other" at the Architekturgalerie am Weißenhof traces exoticism in Stuttgart and contextualizes it within urban planning and architectural frameworks. By deconstructing its architectural features and ideological origins, the exhibition invites critical examination of how historical and contemporary exoticism shapes entrenched patterns of perception. The illusion of "the Other" is exposed as a European-created and enduring fantasy.

Curated by Agata Wolbert, Aleksandar Kuzmanov, Ismael Rittmann, Jalma Fiolka, Jonathan Dawit, Justus Büttner, Mathilde Le Monnier, María Fernanda López Galindo, Marie Falkenhan, Nina Ludwig, Xia Hua, Yassmina Makhlouf & Mila Kostović

www.weissenhofgalerie.de