RED | of disappearance and resistance
RED | of disappearance and resistance tells of women, of their visibility and invisibility and of their attempts to resist oppression. I collect the stories of women from all over the world, process them photographically and thus make visible the emotional blurs that arise through isolation, distress or withdrawal but also through the dynamics of resistance. The stories are as different and diverse as the women themselves. They tell of the causes of disappearance or withdrawal. But they also tell of the strength that women mobilise to rebel and free themselves from seemingly insurmountable circumstances.
In the photographs for this project, I play with sharpness and blurriness, such as one feels with extremely heightened senses or with excitement and panic. The colour RED is ambivalent and symbolises pain, blood, violence and death as well as power, strength, courage and resistance. It is symbolised by a red scarf. The women are not always shown in the photos. They themselves decide whether and how they want to be shown. Depending on their past and the paths they have taken, some of them are very concerned to talk about what they have experienced and overcome and to document this visually. For others, it would be downright dangerous to be recognised. They only want to convey their message indirectly through the photographs. Some women I could only contact via Zoom because they live far away in other countries, so photos with them were not possible anyway. Although all the women have contributed to the creation of the photo motifs with their own wishes and thoughts, often only the symbolisation of their intention resonates. And their names remain a secret between them and me.
The project was supported by a Hamburg Future Grant from the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media in cooperation with the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung and the Berufsverband bildender Künstler*innen Hamburg.
The women's stories are collected in an oversized book (50 x 100 cm) whose increasing weight is meant to document the weightiness of these women's stories. The project is not finished and so this book will also become thicker and heavier... perhaps until it can no longer be carried.
At the end of the scholarship my work was shown at the TONALI Gallery in Hamburg in April 2022.
