1. Forgotten Doctrine, 2024 , Work in progress
As time passes since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the harsh realities of the dictatorship have faded in people's consciousness. The regime's oppressive nature—marked by surveillance, control, restrictions on freedom, and the silencing of dissent—has been overshadowed by nostalgia. We are also witnessing a generational shift, with memories losing the intensity of firsthand experience. Younger generations, growing up without direct knowledge of the GDR, rely on second-hand accounts, history books, and media, none of which fully convey the regime's impact.
Using archival material, I delve into the language, propaganda, militarisation, and the negative portrayal of the West that were ingrained in me from childhood. My sources include old school slides, negatives from my archive, required reading materials, and my journals. Rather than presenting these artefacts as static archival displays, I integrate them into my art works.Through physical interventions like rolling, folding, and bending, and using materials such as emulsion paint and resin, I transform these artefacts, obscuring their original content while preserving their essence. I photograph these sculptures and incorporating the objects into the final display.
The project Weißer Regen explores themes of personal nostalgia and conflict. It incorporates books by Soviet authors and projects military indoctrination slides of gamma radiation effects onto rolled paper from the books.
In Friedenskinder, I examine the GDR's contradiction as a "peace state" while enforcing widespread militarisation. Inspired by Reiner Kunze’s banned book Die wunderbaren Jahre, I created an artwork using rolled-up copies of his text placed inside rifle shell cases.
In Pavlov’s Children and Faux Diamonds, I revisited my archive of hundreds of black-and-white negatives of students, taken in the final weeks before my abrupt reassignment in July 1989, just months before the Wall fell. These negatives, now encased in resin, serve as archival artefacts from a time when conformity was enforced, and dissent was punished.
Ultimately, my work seeks to provoke an examination of the legacy of authoritarianism and the malleability of memory. By preserving the complexities of life under dictatorship, it serves as a metaphor for the dangers of historical amnesia, reminding us that, without conscious effort, the vividness of our shared history can fade, erasing crucial details needed to fully understand the past and its relevance today.
Using archival material, I delve into the language, propaganda, militarisation, and the negative portrayal of the West that were ingrained in me from childhood. My sources include old school slides, negatives from my archive, required reading materials, and my journals. Rather than presenting these artefacts as static archival displays, I integrate them into my art works.Through physical interventions like rolling, folding, and bending, and using materials such as emulsion paint and resin, I transform these artefacts, obscuring their original content while preserving their essence. I photograph these sculptures and incorporating the objects into the final display.
The project Weißer Regen explores themes of personal nostalgia and conflict. It incorporates books by Soviet authors and projects military indoctrination slides of gamma radiation effects onto rolled paper from the books.
In Friedenskinder, I examine the GDR's contradiction as a "peace state" while enforcing widespread militarisation. Inspired by Reiner Kunze’s banned book Die wunderbaren Jahre, I created an artwork using rolled-up copies of his text placed inside rifle shell cases.
In Pavlov’s Children and Faux Diamonds, I revisited my archive of hundreds of black-and-white negatives of students, taken in the final weeks before my abrupt reassignment in July 1989, just months before the Wall fell. These negatives, now encased in resin, serve as archival artefacts from a time when conformity was enforced, and dissent was punished.
Ultimately, my work seeks to provoke an examination of the legacy of authoritarianism and the malleability of memory. By preserving the complexities of life under dictatorship, it serves as a metaphor for the dangers of historical amnesia, reminding us that, without conscious effort, the vividness of our shared history can fade, erasing crucial details needed to fully understand the past and its relevance today.