Labour of Mourning_Disco, installation, paper machée, mirror,
Wood, carton board, human hair, hairpins, candles, size variable
2020/21
Labour of Mourning_Disco Girls, paper maché,
Mirror, wood, carton board, human hair, hairpins
80 x 80 x 90cm, 2020
Labour of Mourning_Disco_Fountain
Paper machée, carton board
120 x 120 x 180cm, 2021
Labour of Mourning_Disco_SEX
Paper machée, mirror, wood, candles
80 x 80 x 90cm, 2020
Labour of Mourning_Disco_LOVE
paper machée, mirror, wood, candles
40x 60 x 70cm, 2020
The term Labor of mourning was first introduced by Sigmund Freud in 1915 in his work Trauer und Melancholie (Mourning and Melancholy). The process of grief is both an individual and a collective process of saying goodbye so that the mourners can go on living with a new understanding of themselves and the world. In my work Labor of mourning i want to discuss collective grief over history and the loss of Utopia- the idea of a so-called good life and how that might look like, after the takeover of capitalism and consumerism in all areas of our modern life in Europe. For this installation I transformed everyday newsprint in sculptural volumes, body liquids, tears and masks. The paper mâché, the material I was currently working with, turned out as very precise in the pandemic: because of its nearly unlimited availability and sustainability and because we were all watching, following and processing the daily news. That’s how I personally processed it further. Disco refers to the Disco Movement of the 70s as an act of Liberation - Liberation through motion. After the Second World War in Germany, the young people adopted a kind of second-order culture that was not reminiscent of the culture of the National Socialists and thus fulfilled their liberation mission in a different way.