Peaches’ People and the Cologne Art Circuit

Cornelia Bölke won a competition run by Adidas Originals with a concept she called a "Shop of Modern Arts"—an actual exhibition installed in the Adidas Originals store near Hackescher Markt in Berlin. The kind of project that positions itself at the border between commerce and gallery without fully committing to either side, which is either an honest description of contemporary art’s situation or a polite way to avoid the question.

The person I kept thinking about was Saskia Hahn. Musician, DJ, visual artist—the kind of Berlin creative who refuses to reduce herself to one legible category. Her project Mine&Hers operated somewhere between remixing and original production, and when she wasn’t doing that she was on tour with Peaches. That last detail carries weight. Peaches has spent the better part of two decades turning explicit sexuality and provocation into a coherent artistic position, and anyone who has lasted in that orbit has clearly survived a particular kind of vetting. Hahn’s studio was in Stattbad Wedding—a former public swimming pool converted into studios and event space, the kind of address the city excelled at before the rents made everything impossible.

Art Cologne opened that same week, one of the older art fairs in Europe. Less glamorous than Frieze or Art Basel, but with a seriousness those events sometimes sacrifice for visibility. The Cologne art market has always carried a civic quality—a belief that collecting is a meaningful act rather than just investment that happens to look good on the wall. Whether that still holds in a market this financialized, I honestly don’t know.