The Sammlung Philara and Verlag Kettler are pleased to present a resource-saving and affordable art book series in pocket format, aimed at mobile readers. In them, discursive exhibitions of the Philara Collection are documented and complemented with socio-critical voices from theoretical, journalistic or writing perspectives.

As an opener, the publication Attempts to Be Many poses the question of how dynamic concepts of identity can be formulated in opposition to rigid constructs of foreign attribution and ideological one-dimensionality. The exhibition of the same name with works by Nara Bak, Jana Buch, Donja Nasseri, Arisa Purkpong, Anys Reimann and Theresa Weber in the Philara Collection 2021/2022 also negotiated the plurality of identities and new narrative forms in relation to learned narratives. The renowned cultural scientist and writer Mithu Sanyal opens up a very personal approach with her text to the exhibition by breaking through identity-political regulatory discourses that flatten into the categories of origin, ethnicity, religion, or gender.

Text in English, German and Thai.