Cat on tree

Bild 1–3: Photography by Eric Tschernow
Bild 4–5: Courtesy the artist and Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin. Photography by Eric Tschernow

For Berlin Art Week, Shahin Zarinbal is pleased to present Sinaida Michalskaja’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Entitled Cat on tree, the exhibition is conceived as an installation centred around Michalskaja’s body of work Multipass, of which she presents a new iteration. These textured assemblages take old rakes as their central element while utilising multiple modes of support, ornamentation and display, sourced from the artist’s own personal archive of more than two decades. The rakes themselves, both physically and idiomatically, refer to the principle of repeating the same mistake without learning from previous experiences. Michalskaja upends this principle by reintroducing these objects as a potential to be reckoned with, a tipping point where the unlikely becomes probable. By way of condensing polyphonic references she asks for the possibility of cross-cultural, crosstheoretical and cross-spiritual understanding in our globally charged, yet personal world experience.

Sinaida Michalskaja lives and works in Berlin. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include: Drei Schwestern (with Andrey Bogush), Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin (2023); mixed feeling breaking patterns, Zarinbal Khoshbakht, Cologne (2020); Soft Hits, Kunstraum Ortloff, Leipzig (2019); and Ideas, Ideals, Deals, Acht Quadrat, Cologne (2017). Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Het Zuid Manifest, Rotterdam (2026), hell is other people (if you are lucky), Stadthausgalerie Münster, Münster (2026); Neu Cöln, Stoffpavillion Müller, Cologne (2025), Metal and the Flesh, Horse and Pony, Berlin (2024); Tagesschau, Mountains, Berlin (2022); Ici et là-bas, Goethe-Institut, Paris (2022); Tell me I belong, MISC, Athens (2021).