KOPFÜBERLEBEN - Life Turned Upside Down

Solo Exhibition
​ACC Galerie Weimar
2021

Click HERE for a virtual 3D walk through the exhibition.
See below for a guided tour.

KOPFÜBERLEBEN (Life Turned Upside Down) explores biographical narratives brought into sharp focus by being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Developed during two years of treatment and recovery, the artworks reveal intimate testimonies of fragility and resilience. They provide not only a glimpse into the subjective experience of dwelling near death but an attempt to gain an insight into the essence of life. What can be learned from a journey through a life-threatening illness? How do we narrate our illness and suffering? How do we transform personal life experiences into knowledge that becomes part of collective memory? 

In the exhibition, extracts from a personal diary during my time of treatment are used to form a narrative thread on the walls leading to stop-motion films, photographs, objects, sculptures, drawings, audio pieces, and installations. The artworks visualize the paradoxical, absurd and often existential elements of a life turned upside down, in which emotions and thoughts become incomprehensible. The viewer is invited to reflect on their own bodily knowledge and experiences of isolation during the global pandemic. Storytelling and narrative are explored to consider how we tell stories, and how we write the scripts of our life. Censorship, self-censorship, repetition, iteration, and meaning of stories connect with biographical literature, and art history to place the personal beyond the self.

The participatory installation Unlearning Learned Nonuse (above) invites visitors to “unlearn” how to draw a simple shape e.g. a circle whilst looking into a mirror. The reflected image gives the illusion of the non-dominant hand as the dominant one. This experience focuses one back to the body and a relearning of seeing and drawing is taking place.

​I Become Us (below) is a fictional chorus of cardboard figures each with a distinct personal voice. Language is broken down to an A sound reminding us of the fragility of the body and our self-awareness only when something goes wrong. All singing voices belong to women from the "Cape Stiftung" Network, which I became part of after my cancer diagnosis.

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The Stop Motion Film I Feel Like Home, It Feels Like Home (below) is a personal dialogue between the artist’s absent and present body. Produced with still images over two years of recovery, the visual narrative is based on body gestures with fictitious organs and morphing of body parts that appear and disappear. A narration, at times dissolving language, connects the two separated selves and weaves together a fictional sense of connection through time.

Exhibition tour with Yvonne Buchheim

The exhibition was funded by the NEUSTART KULTUR Module D of the Deutscher Künstlerbund. An accompanying art book with the same title was published by Kerber Verlag in 2023 with funding from  VG Bild-Kunst, Kulturstiftung Thüringen, Cape Stiftung and the ACC Galerie Weimar.