DIE AUFSTELLUNG thematises the passing on of traumas from the Second World War in my family home. The starting point is an archive of 550 metal objects that my grandfather, a former Wehrmacht soldier, made over several decades in the cellar of our shared home. The objects become carriers of trauma in the routine of craftsmanship. In order to show the influence of the unspoken war experiences on everyday family life, I juxtapose the metal objects with both war photographs and family photos that show excerpts from my family’s everyday life up to the early 2000s. The war photographs and objects take up a whole page one after the other. The objects are superimposed on the much smaller family photos, which are reminiscent of prints from family photo albums due to their smaller size, and confronted with the war material. Where understanding ends, seeing begins. For me, the photographs and layers represent an attempt to take an analytical look at the material.
I have been working with the described material since 2018. In 2019, I exhibited the 550 objects as an installation at Kunstraum Ortloff Leipzig. For me, a photographic documentation of the material and the transfer into a book form quickly became imperative in order to approach the material analytically. For my diploma thesis in autumn 2020, I conceived the artist’s book DIE AUFSTELLUNG. In autumn 2022, I will show a further development of the installation and the artist’s book in a solo exhibition at the Europäisches Künstlerhaus Oberbayern.
I see my artistic work as self-questioning and self-positioning. I work primarily in the media of photography and text. In my works, which are characterised by the techniques of montage and cinematic thinking, I refer to cinematic and literary narrative styles, which I question both artistically and curatorially. In DIE AUFSTELLUNG, I create a continuous narrative in book form by assembling found and photographed archive material, which is expanded with prose text and questions my own origins. Coming from a stage design background and familiar with the effect and staging of spaces, I attach great importance to the spatial presentation of the works. Working in dialogue and collectively is an important part of my practice. I work together with other artists, most recently with Lucia Graf for the joint work Room with a sink, in which we use the protagonists A and B to negotiate the themes of touch, communication and proximity. I am part of the curatorial collective at Kunstverein Leipzig.

*1991 in Freising (Upper Bavaria), lives and works in Leipzig (DE)

2015-2020 Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (Diploma, Prof. Clemens von Wedemeyer)
2018 Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Prof. Anna Viebrock)
2011-2016 University Mozarteum Salzburg (diploma, stage design)

since 2020 part of the curator:innenkollektiv of the Kunstverein Leipzig

http://rebekkabauer.de