Exhibitions

11 May to 31 July 2026

Migration is not an abstract phenomenon — it has faces, places, and stories. The travelling exhibition "The Roads of Europe. Photographs of a Migration Journey" makes exactly that visible. The show brings together 20 photographs by young artists documenting experiences of exile, transit, and memory across Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Serbia, and France. It was one of the first selected funded Joint Student Projects within the European Reform University Alliance (ERUA) and is entirely a student project. After a first showing at the Paris8 university library, and a stopover at the UAEGEAN in Mytilene, Lesbos, the exhibition is now travelling to further ERUA partner universities. You can find more information on Joint Student Projects here.

Location: Gräfin-Dönhoff-Building, 1st floor, Europaplatz 1, Frankfurt (Oder)

9 April to 23 June 2026

It was not until the end of the 1980s that the role of gender in art was publicly focussed on in the GDR. Previously, this category had not been considered as an influencing factor in working conditions or in the creative process. As women were officially equal to men, gender did not have to be considered separately. Rather, it was used to reinforce prescribed role models in art. Using Frankfurt (Oder) as an example, the exhibition with selected works from the city's Artothek now provides an insight into how female artists worked in the GDR and what role the female gender actually played in GDR art.

The exhibited works are part of the Artothek of the city of Frankfurt (Oder). The city's Artothek is a cultural institution where works of painting and graphic art can be borrowed privately or through public institutions. The collection includes the holdings of the former GDR institutions of the Building Staff for Visual Arts and Monument Preservation and the Centre for Artistic Workshops and is also a testimony to the GDR art scene in Frankfurt (Oder).

Location: Main Building in front of the library, Große Scharrnstraße 59

Online exhibition

As part of the seminar „Female Ancestors in Photographs and Documents“, a research project began at the Faculty of Cultural Studies at the European University Viadrina in the summer semester of 2023, under the direction of lecturer PD Dr Izabella Parowicz, in which students created a biography of a female ancestor living in the first half of the 20th century.

After this seminar was completed, three of the participants from the seminar (Anna Beuchel, Jan Hoffmann and Maria Siegele), together with a new student (Emilia Zimmermann), attended the subsequent course „Female Ancestors in Photographs and Documents – Exhibition Project“ in the winter semester 2023/24. The aim of this seminar was to create a website from the previously compiled biographies in order to create a digital exhibition project for internal and external visitors to the university.

The online exhibition shows historical images including accompanying texts in German and Polish and invites visitors to discover and remember. Over the course of the year, image galleries, videos and continuing stories will complement the digital offering and allow visitors to experience the history of Viadrina and the many people who have built and shaped the university since it was founded.