Erinnerungen

Participatory installation, 2014 Postcard series consisting of 6 motifs. The motifs were created through photo-slide reproductions of telephone interviews regarding the question: „What is your image of Chernobyl?“ Visitors of the exhibition are invited to take the postcards with them. ‚Vera Drebusch, born in 1986, deals with contemporary history and its ‘updating’ in the form of personal memories and testimonies in her photographic-, textual- and mediaworks. They gain relevance through the encounter of individual lives and historical events, similar to a knot of a ribbon. By asking people who consciously perceived the nulear reactor accident in Chernobyl in 1986 about their recoll- ection of, she receives answers like: “Going outside, you are not allowed to open your mouth!”. These satements sensualize the abstract drastical a far away incident and translate it into a concrete experience, that one is able to understand. The statements concerning the body directly (that deal with food and breathing for example) even have the strength to make the understanding almost inevitable. Drebusch makes those experiences present, for example the prohibition to consume certain foods due to their vulnerability to radiation. The pralines she is offering to the gallery visitors at the opening are made of then ‘forbidden’ ingredients. That they are harmless is generally a matter of trust.‘ Press release Gallery Nagel Draxler