Leunora Salihu's two-metre-high sculpture Bogen (Arch) rises up like a delicate, shiny silver piece of jewelry on the former dog run of the Hoheneck women's prison. The artist, who was born in 1977 in Pristina/Kosovo and now lives in Düsseldorf, has created a work made of hundreds of circular aluminum discs that is reminiscent of a tall, narrowly tapering gate.

The sculpture invites you to walk through it and observe the play of shadows that changes with the position of the sun, the weather and the seasons. Through the repetition and arrangement of modular pane elements, Salihu explores movement within a static form, the interplay of inside and outside and the invisible stories interwoven with place. Her clearly structured, constructive form is symbolically linked to Stollberg, whose old town is dominated by the mighty Hoheneck Castle.

Originally built as a hunting lodge, Hoheneck served as a remand prison from the 17th century and later as a penitentiary, the structure of which was massively fortified. After the GDR was founded in 1949, it became one of the country's most notorious women's prisons. Political prisoners were imprisoned there, and an application to leave the country was often enough to become a "Hohenecker". The prison conditions were inhumane: in the overcrowded prison - at times with up to 1600 women - isolation, dark detention and piecework were the order of the day. Under the most adverse conditions, the inmates produced tights and bed linen, which were sold to West German companies.