I was part of the exhibition „Die Pfeile des wilden Apollos“ that recently came to an end. Throughout this experience I had many of thoughts and want to share some of this process.

To be honest, I was very much limited during this exhibition process. In this exhibition I worked with animals appearing on the pictures and the stories of the historically loaded topic. I found out that the Ossian cycle originally comes from a Celtic mythodology, where animals where often saviors and guides. Through the material he gave us and the pictures I saw, I very much hardly saw animals. And if I saw them, I saw them in a negative connotation or just on the border of the images. Like the snake in Messias. Or as James MacPherson wrote „the robbery bird“ or „the venomous snake“. So I questioned the appearance of the animals and wondered, how the story could look like if animals where the center of it.

My work prompted a lot of discussions, which I was first very happy about. I see discussions like this as an opportunity to grow and critically reflect about my own thoughts. Until it switched to a weird power dynamic for me as I was told to not be too prominent in this exhibition, that I should be smaller then Füger, that my work is to bright, to colorful. As I experienced through my artistic practice in the past, if you want to speak about marginalized position and the power structures behind them, it tends to provoke defensive reactions. This happened here too.

My artistic practice is exactly about this power structures. Therefore I couldn’t just drop out of the exhibition, here it was the beginning where it started to be more interesting for me. The curator is a drawer and his practice is loaded with pencil drawings. So I knew if I would come up with a sketchbook, there would be no more discussions to it. I negotiated then to have at least one painting of me in the exhibition, as I would have loved to see my material next to a historical painting. I had no influence in the decision, where my work will be shown in the exhibition space. I also didn’t know that the other drawings where also in a black frame. I intentionally incorporated the painting and put it in a black frame to fit in this hierarchy means. Surprisingly the other works in this institutional space where also put in a black frame.

During the exhibition, they laid down gloves next to my sketchbook which I honestly very much hated there. Aesthetically and functionally. There were no reasons for me for this gloves. I painted some drawings in oil pastels in a book so I wanted that viewers get dirty from touching it. Therefore I collected the gloves right away from the opening on. During the next day there were again new white gloves next to my sketchbook. I then collected it again. I came then every now and then to see if they put new gloves there, and if, I collected them and brought it in my studio. Sometimes I found a use for them if I used some chemicals or underneath the latex gloves. On Saturday, the day before the last day, I brought all the gloves back that I collected during this exhibition procedure. 

The painting itself showing an animal which draws the sketchbook, hanging on a leash. The sketchbook next to it, resembles my original idea of the animal perspective within the ossian cycle in various sketches and drawings.