Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci will discuss her 2024 film Glück auf in Deutschland (Good Luck in Germany), which is featured in her first major exhibition in the United States, here at the Harvard Art Museums. The film examines the construction of postwar German identity in the Ruhrgebiet, a heavily industrialized region known for coal mining and steel production, as shaped by layered experiences of survival, resistance, and resilience. In it, Öğrenci applies a feminist lens, broadening the history of industrial labor beyond the male worker and the factory. The lecture brings Glück auf in Deutschland into conversation with Öğrenci’s other films, exploring filmmaking as a political practice through which the history of “guest workers” can be connected to ongoing struggles around labor, migration, and belonging.
The exhibition Pınar Öğrenci: Glück auf in Deutschland (April 16, 2026–October 18, 2026) includes the 2024 film Glück auf in Deutschland (Good Luck in Germany) as well as five related collages that reimagine the bodies of workers and their families within the Ruhr landscape and its architecture. Öğrenci’s use of the phrase Glück auf—a common way that miners wish one another a safe return after their physically grueling and dangerous work underground—resonates with the experiences of immigrant communities in present-day Germany facing right-wing extremism.
Following the program, guests are invited to visit the exhibition on Level 1.
This lecture will be recorded and made available for online viewing; check back shortly after the event for the link to view.
This event is part of In Conversation, a series of evening programs that feature local and international curators, artists, scholars, and more. Running from September through April, these events highlight our temporary exhibitions, permanent collections, and a range of creative voices.
