Vasl collaborated with the IVS Gallery, Goethe Institute, Full Circle Gallery and Be Berlin for the exhibition Tracing the Void, held at the IVS Gallery from 4-10 February 2015.

Tracing the Void displayed the works of two artists, Sonya Schönberger from Germany and Sajjad Ahmed from Pakistan. Both artists investigated individual and national identity in the light of the nation’s history, bringing forth installation pieces that uniquely addressed manipulated narratives in their personal art practices.

Schönberger showcased archaeological remittances from Germany’s war with an audiovisual display that detailed each artifact. “In encounter with Schnöberger’s work, the viewer is positioned as a spectator. Acting thus, he/she looks for himself/herself in this artistic reference to the horrors of war.” (Omar Wasim, from Musings on, or Theorizing Fragments in Sonya Schönberger)

Ahmed transformed the gallery space into an illusionary corner of a house, while playing a video of a political strike, layered over a classical painting. “In Ahmed’s installation, the only surface where imagery of violence is explicitly reproduced is behind a curtain. Completely abstracted, this imagery is embedded into a grid placed over a video…the space of the security artifact becomes the space of violence.” (Zahra Malkani, from Separation’s Materiality)