Since 2010, the art mediation project Students Discover Contemporary Art, initiated by SCHUFA Holding AG and Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, has been the opportunity for a group of Wiesbaden students to collaboratively and creatively engage with an artist exhibition at the Nassauischer Kunstverein. This year’s starting point is the international group exhibition Alles im Wunderland, investigating the ambivalent relationship between animals and humans. The exhibition particularly focusses on those animals that are often perceived as unpleasant, disgusting and as "unnecessary" within the man-made hierarchy.

The exhibition showcases the series Snails (2018-20) by Dominica Bednarsky. The artist has placed 150 ceramic snail sculptures in the exhibition space. It seems as though the snails are taking over the space, specifically demanding the visitors’ attention so that they will not accidentally be destroyed on a visitor’s walk through the room. Just like in nature, Dominika Bednarsky’s slugs seem vulnerable within the exhibition space, lacking a roof over their heads. Starting with the question of what defines a house and what qualities it has, the students of Brückenschule Wiesbaden, a special school for ill students, have given a ceramic home to the slugs. It quickly became visible that a house needs not have four walls and a roof but can be a fantasy landscape, a bathtub or maybe a stone tank.

Students not only dealt with the topic (snail) house through working with clay, but also in drawing and poetically in a creative-writing-excursus taking place during the workshop. A special role was taken on by notions of shelter, refuge or fantasy world. The ceramic works as well as the drawings and pieces of writing done by the students will be on view at the Nassauischer Kunstverein from October 1^st until October 10^th, 2021.