A war is not a natural event or a stroke of fate. It is the result of concrete decisions, with concrete effects on people. Humans as victims and civil societies threatenend by current situations of war and violence worldwide are at the focus of the banner campaign in February 2023.

The occasion for the joint banner campaign of culture is the 78th anniversary of the destruction of Dresden in February 1945. Whose War, Whose Peace is a campaign of the alliance #WOD Weltoffenes Dresden, which is dedicated to the shared exchange on current perspectives of remembrance. As an alliance of Dresden cultural institutions #WOD Weltoffenes Dresden stands up for a cosmopolitan and solidary society, democratic values as well as the diversity and freedom of art and culture.

In Cooperation between Kunsthaus Dresden and Ausländerrat Dresden e. V. :

Abkhazia, Akarmara, 19/07/2019, photography

The photograph shows an apartment in Akarma in Abkhazia, which was probably left by its inhabitants in a great hurry, and remains empty to this day. Abkhazia means land of souls in Abkhazian language; the region, which borders on the Black Sea, since the disintegration of the Soviet Union under international law is considered to be part of Georgia. During the separatist secession, which was accompanied by military conflicts and ethnic cleansing, the region lost almost half of the people who lived there. The former mining town of Akarmara is now considered a ghost town.

The motif is part of a photo series by the photographer Ksenia Kuleshova, born in Russia in 1988, and was selected by Kunsthaus Dresden in cooperation with the Ausländerrat Dresden as a contribution to „Whose War, Whose Peace“.