Collage shortcuts

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When I started making collages, I felt that painting didn’t give me a connection to the events in the world. Painting, in my eyes, deals essentially with painting. I must admit that my collages of the past years were mostly concerned with pictures, often taken from fashion magazines and art reproductions. They mainly dealt with collage itself. I mean by that researching the expressive possibilities. Without pretending that I take a new direction, my inspiration now mainly comes from news pictures, linking myself to my beginnings in collage.
The original, showing the “tigress” of Tunisia, arriving at a fashionable place in France, became something like tragedy in my eyes. It’s the sudden destruction of what was before, of the own image, an outburst of violence against oneself, after terrorizing the whole country for decades. And I muse about the moment when the decision to abandon, to flee, to leave everything behind in a couple of minutes. It’s a catastrophe anyway, even if I don’t feel committed to dictators or other predators.
On a personal level, leaving a (false) image of oneself, not knowing what is going to come or how to replace it, are questions I ask myself. Another question is the exile. Personally, I am glad that I left my home country, gave away my passport, because in my eyes Germany, as a territory, bears the curse of Cain. I changed language, habits, but I remain an exile.