While tidying up my sentimental stuff a few weeks ago, I found some special editions from German newspapers to celebrate the German unification on October 3, 1990. This event was crucial for my life, but that’s another story.
When reading through these newspapers again, my ideas about creating paper collages took shape. It’s been a time I was researching about materials to glue and protect the art. There is a huge amount of products available but finding the right one was a bit of a challenge. I wanted to glue thin, old printed paper on canvas, it should not crumble or crease and not taking the colours away. After trying some materials I ended up with Medium Gel from Liquitex. It worked perfectly for glueing and I even used it for varnishing the ready collages.
As different the motifs might be, these four collages are assembled under one topic: Traces.
Traces of one’s life, influenced by politics, traces of travelling the world, traces of modern consumption and traces from identity documents.
The collages might seem personal but I think they are quite universal, we are affected by politics, we travel, buy things online, having a lot of documents to proof our existence. We leave traces offline and online while living our life, often not thinking much about it.