Separation, unaccommodation, and disintegration are traumatic events commonly induced by leaving one’s home, whether voluntarily or unwillingly. I have been perusing the effects of such traumatic events referencing my own migration from Germany to America. Examining my family’s and my native country’s, but also my own fractured history, I have come to realize that the artist’s role as interpreter of interrupted narratives carries the promise of a reconsideration and a potential re-evaluation of archived manifestations, may they be individual or institutional. I do not associate the concept of home to a specific place, and I do not miss the sense of belonging to a geographically determined location. I am quite comfortable with the idea of comprising my own narrative as an artist, whether associated with Germany, the US, or the migratory activity in between.
I work primarily in photography, video, dance and performance but incorporate non-traditional art media such as baking, gaming, and trace making into my practice. I investigate the importance of belonging and its effect on memory. My investigations rely on philosophical, historical, and scientific aspects of Western origin to inform my artistic concepts.
This analysis of traditions, archives, and chronicles, and the significance of personal memory relates to my previous projects concerned with religious narratives and their artistic interpretations in a contemporary context. The photographs of my series Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht, informed by my Catholic upbringing, but also by my experience of producing glamour shots in a commercial photo studio in Berlin, refer to historical iconography with its emphasis on illusion, recognition, and pictorial narration.
In my most recent project, Flüstergewürz, I have been concerned with the fragmentation of cultural narratives and its significance in a globalizing world, triggered by my migration. I have been collaborating with artists and non-artists in Germany and the U.S. on a project in which I scrutinize notions of history and nostalgia, the significance of storytelling, and the present alteration of our perception of time and space through the dissolution of borders in virtual reality and the concrete re-enforcement of national boundaries.