You Only Live Once Painting

Born in Germany, I emigrated to New Zealand with my family at the age of ten. I later began my studies in Fine Arts at ELAM School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland), and continued to finish my degree in Spain, with scholarships for two semesters in Italy, and one semester in Chile. After also spending extended periods in Australia and England, I moved to Berlin in 2015 to work as a freelance artist. Inspired by my biography, marked by travel and numerous changes of location, as well as the associated search for my place in each environment, I continuously take up themes that focus on the human being and its ambivalent identity in the global and at the same time fragmented world. On the one hand, I am interested in the dialogue between the individual and space, privacy and surveillance, the examination of one's own family history and the question of what "family" actually means, the defusing of memory through blurring, the rituals of communication. At the same time, I explore self-representation as a mixture of veiling and unveiling, the use of masks to speak about that which we hide and the media's female ideal of beauty. My oil paintings, mixed media on canvas and wood, ink, pencil or chalk drawings are the result of a long working process in which I collect and process material such as photographs (including family albums), sounds, sketches and notes from the urban environment. For me, art is a means to preserve the temporary and ephemeral from disappearing and being forgotten.