2024/25
Book, 17 x 24 cm
»Born to be Wild« denkt Natur als Projektionsfläche und Sehnsuchtsort. Die Berührung wird zum Bild, die Jagd zur Geste, das Wilde zur Konstruktion. Durch gezielte Beschneidungen und formgebende Eingriffe werden die Bildfragmente in symbolische Körper eingeschrieben – als Waffe, als Tier, als Zeichen. Eine fragmentarische Erzählung über Nähe und Distanz, über das fortwährende Bedürfnis, Natur zu formen, zu berühren und in Bildern zu bewahren.
2024/25
Inkjet-Print, Beeswax, Resin on wood
ca. 120 x 45 cm
The longing for the untouched in nature meets the human urge to domesticate the wild. The sword-shaped surfaces bear photographs of the touch of an animal skin through artificially extended fingernails on their blades sealed with beeswax and resin. A staged act of taming the original. The form intervenes in the content, limits it, and thus allows it to become a symbol itself: of nature and artificiality, power and tenderness, control and wilderness. The photographs are based on AI-generated image prompts. They don’t depict real encounters, but visual imaginings of what touching an animal might look like. What appears empathetic is already a translation, a technologically shaped simulation. In the studio, I reconstruct these moments through elaborate setups. The animal becomes a site of projection, a mirror of human desire oscillating between intimacy and domination. The sword shapes are not historical replicas but laser-cut MDF silhouettes, sealed with encaustic and edged in blaze orange, a textile tape used in hunting, highly visible to humans, but barely perceptible to animals. Camouflage and signal, visibility and invisibility, do not stand in opposition; instead, they collapse into one another. The sword here is neither static metaphor nor purely symbolic object. It is tool, interface, point of contact. It doesn’t just frame the image, it cuts through it, redirects perception, and disrupts the surface. In this disruption, the medium itself asks: Who is touching whom? At the core of this work lies an inquiry into the intersections of archaic ritual and contemporary technology. The sword doesn’t glorify violence; it questions cultural narratives of power. Inspired by alternative storytelling models like Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, I ask: What kinds of tools shape our worldviews? Which stories of violence persist, and what other narratives might emerge? Working with ambiguous gestures and symbolic materials, I seek to open a space for reflecting on how ‘wildness’ is imagined—and what it means to try to reach for it.
2024
Inkjet-Print, Beeswax, Resin on wood
ca. 250 x 230 cm
Carrier Bag (Diana) presents a photographic installation that engages with the figure of Diana from Roman mythology—goddess of the hunt, the moon, and untamed nature. The project takes this archetype as a starting point to reflect on themes such as identity, narrative structures, and cultural imagery.
A central object, a wig pierced by silver arrows, functions as a visual and conceptual anchor. Around it, photographs are arranged in a mind-map-like structure consisting of object studies, portraits, and round images treated with encaustic.
The visual composition creates a layered field of associations. Diana appears in various guises, without aiming to depict a single character. The project proposes storytelling as an open, non-linear, and collecting practice. Material choices such as wax and pigment introduce texture and opacity, evoking processes of layering, preserving, and transformation. Rather than telling a closed story, the work invites viewers to explore connections and shifts between image, myth, and interpretation.
