I am a Cold War child and grew up in the thick of it. As a true Berliner, I lived in Neukölln before it was cool to reside in what was then the downtrodden edge of West-Berlin bordering the wall - a city without a country, as some Western Germans called it. But being untethered was its great advantage: It was a magnet for Andersdenkende - those thinking differently. It was therefore difficult to disentangle the personal from the political in Berlin. Our education was intensely political and aimed to create critical citizens that would stand up in the face of any future demagogues and ensure what happened in the 1930s and 40s could never happen again. I therefore learnt to question 'cui bono' at every opportunity. Today and among many more obvious monuments to our often shameful past, 'Stolpersteine' around Berlin in front of the houses of the deported remind us lest we forget.
I was 13 when the wall fell. We spent much of the 90s dancing in the disused power stations and cellar clubs of former East Berlin, where so much was created from so little. I am therefore immensely influenced by the raw and the industrial. I find beauty in textures and imperfections and seek to bring these into my practice.
The tolerant atmosphere, the sense of something seminal and collaborative developing in those abandoned buildings late in the 20th century clearly shaped my views. Humans invented and reinvented themselves, clubs moved to new locations every few months and the face of Berlin was changing rapidly.
On the outside, I am nothing like I was back then, starting with diametrically opposed sleep cycles. Priorities, purpose and meaning have shifted, the rate of change is less frantic and accidental, many aspects of existence have become less precarious. While the pace has not slowed, my surroundings and relationships have settled and with that, my lifelong longing to be a goldsmith reemerged and began to crystallise.
Today, I am never more in my element than when I am in my studio, ideally on a warm day with the door wide open into the garden. Here, I create pieces that are allegories on us as humans, pieces that contain the call to celebrate our becoming over time, to accept ourselves in any given moment and to own our imperfections!