A LONG JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS

The thematic focus of the project is on the existential questions of our present: Why is there a lack of awareness among large parts of a Western privileged world for the devastating global effects of climate change? What would a post-terrestrial and a post-capitalist habitat look like? Can‘t the peak of the global crisis also be seen as an opportunity? „A Long Journey Into Darkness“ comprises 7 large-scale paintings in correspondence with a Cli-Fi text consisting of three chapters, Fear (reflects on our present), Grief (mourns the loss of the earth) and Hope (tells of life on the space stations, many generations after the first settlement) . In it I imagine a post-apocalyptic world and explore the resulting habitat of two space stations in outer space. Can humans evolve and grow beyond the sum of their previous existence to create a life of solidarity and sustainability for all involved? The short stories were read in English and German.

The main painting, Yelumis (2023) and its counterpart, Enemy Mine (2023) are composed of ground plans and outlines of buildings, landmarks and city structures of the lost civilisations on earth. I use the legacies of human culture for the construction of the space stations, in order to give points of orientation in exile, in a life situation characterised above all by fear and danger.

The colour black is essential in my work. It stands for silence, clarity and a new beginning in the conviction that something new can only emerge from darkness. On closer inspection, the dystopian character stands for the moment of a new beginning. The planet perishes and humanity finds refuge in the eternal blackness of space. In this darkness, the survivors create a new life for themselves. The dystopia ends with the arrival on the space station Yelumis and a reinterpretation of the negative into the positive takes place.

The project tells of a non-planetary and utopian existence of humankind in a supposedly hostile, never-ending shadow. It offers a way of dealing with the current global ecological and cultural crisis. This is not least about the questions in which world and in which way we want to live.