Kinderland Has Burned Down

At the beginning, there was the idea of a panopticon of old dolls: bizarre scenes, small bodies in strange combinations, familiar childhood objects placed in an environment that no longer feels innocent. Dolls that usually stand for care, play, and security were meant to enter a state in which they tell something else. Something broken. Something disturbing. Something lying beneath the surface.

Later, the thought emerged of placing a radical counterpart opposite this world of dolls: a dominatrix studio as a grotesque intensification, as a contrasting surface, as an exaggeration of power, body, control, and staging. From the original panopticon, a space gradually emerged in which childhood and adulthood could no longer be cleanly separated. The seemingly harmless met the theatrical, the playful met the abyssal, the private met the displayed.

The actual planning took place, for the most part, inside my head. There was no complete rehearsal, no test version set up beforehand, no safe distance from the finished work. Only a few weeks before the fair did a plan emerge on graph paper. Much remained open until the installation was assembled. The work had to assert itself in the space, react there, grow there.

At the same time, the search for material began. Over many months, I collected old toys, dolls, childhood objects, and personal mementos. Some of them came from my own childhood. Other things arrived through a public call. People donated historical toys, read about the planned exhibition, and gave away something that had once belonged to a child’s room.

In the end, not everything found its place. The roughly 30 square meters filled up faster than I had expected. I had to leave out many objects, even though, in my imagination, they had initially belonged to the work.

This act of leaving things out became part of the process. Because “Kinderland ist abgebrannt” was not a collection of objects. It was a condition. A condensation.

The installation process at the Discovery Art Fair therefore became a decisive moment in itself. I was allowed to begin setting up one day earlier than the other exhibitors. Black carpet, black walls, the Toybox, the first placements. Only there did it become clear how much material the space could truly carry. Only there did the final refinement take shape. Not in the studio, not on paper, but directly in the exhibition space.

A childhood land that has not simply passed, but burned. A place that once promised protection and later becomes visible only as a ruin.

For me, this installation became one of my most personal works. Violence, abuse, loss, injury, and the dark spaces of childhood had already played a recurring role in earlier works. But here, they moved even closer to my own biography. The installation was not only an artistic staging, but also an attempt to bring something to a close, to exhibit something that had long been working inside me.

Until the very end, the question remained open as to whether I could truly show this work. Whether it was too personal. Whether it revealed too much. Whether the step into public visibility would succeed. For this exhibition, I even took out cancellation insurance – out of the very real possibility that, shortly before the presentation, I might not find the courage to show the work publicly after all.

Many visitors reacted intensely, stood in front of the installation for a long time, spoke with one another, looked into the Toybox, and tried to make sense of what they were seeing. I repeatedly placed myself within the crowd and observed how the work affected the visitors, what they said, how they looked, where they hesitated, and where they lingered longer.

What was especially striking to me was that I was recognized through my artistic handwriting. It was not simply individual works that were recognized; I, as an artist, was being placed by some visitors. Someone said to their companion: “Ah, that’s the one with the red-and-white figures.” Or: “That’s the one with the ravens.” Others remembered “Hope” or my earlier spatial installation with the confessional at the Discovery Art Fair.

This recognition was a special experience. It showed me that, over the years, a visual language of my own has developed, one that does not need to be explained in order to be perceived. A handwriting that leaves traces.

The timing also intensified this feeling. The exhibition took place in April. Shortly afterwards, my psychologist informed me that she would be closing her practice. In this way, the therapy that had been part of this inner process for many years also found its own kind of conclusion. Not planned, not staged, but nevertheless fitting to this feeling that something ends with this work and, at the same time, something new might begin.

“Kinderland ist abgebrannt” is therefore not only an installation about childhood. It is a work about memory, courage, shame, looking, control, loss, and the possibility of looking at oneself anew from the ruins of an inner place.