I was born in 1981 in West Berlin, a little German island surrounded by a 156-km-long wall that separated the western sectors of Berlin from what was then the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As a child I knew little about the separation of Berlin.
To me, the wall was a colorful art gallery. Sprayers, children, artists and tourists from all around the world created the biggest collective art piece in history. Pictures were often painted or sprayed secretly during the night. A picture you saw one day could look totally different the next day.
The great wall art of the Berlin Wall and an advertising column in the street where we lived inspired my art style even in my early childhood. I started to tear up old posters from walls or columns to use to create my own pictures. Because I grew up on a construction site, I had a lot of material like sand, concrete, wire, stones and tiles that I could use to mix with the paper, posters and articles I collected. Unfortunately none of these art pieces has survived through the years.
Since my parents loved bicycling we did a lot of trips during the weekends and school vacation times. We lived very close to the wall, so we passed it a lot. I was always impressed by the colorful concrete block rising up to the sky like a stone giant with a colorful dress. I was always excited to visit the wall and see if anyone had painted or sprayed a new picture. It was also like a treasure hunt to look for old art pieces and writings that had been painted over.
My passion for art started with the wall. Imagine how shocked I was when my father, sitting at the kitchen table on 10 November 1989, told my mother, my little brother and me – 8 years at the time – over breakfast about the historic and breathtaking night he had just experienced. “They are tearing down the wall”, he said. “What? Why would someone intentionally destroy art and why is everyone, including my father, celebrating this?” I was upset. My father took me to the wall the same evening. When we reached it he lifted me up to people standing on top of it, and I found myself standing next to them. I saw people dancing, laughing and crying for joy. While my father was trying to find one of the ladders that were leaning against the wall to climb up, I turned around and saw the other side. For the first time I realized that the other side looked very different. The death strip with its guard towers, dog cable runs, floodlights and border troops. It was a devastating picture. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, not falling into a rabbit hole but standing on a wall which was the gate to another world.
When I was 16 years old I went abroad for a high school year in America. I lived in Lexington, South Carolina, and I was the first exchange student hosted by the Matuszek family. When I enrolled at Lexington High School I was very eager to take all the main subjects I needed to get permission to skip 11th grade and go right to 12th grade once I came back to Germany. When I spoke to the guidance counselor she convinced me to also take a fun class. The best possible recommendation and the very best class for my future: I took the photography class with Mr. Mason. I learned all about photography – the right angle, the setting and the light – and how to develop photos in the dark room. South Carolina offered me a great stage to learn. The southern heart of America with its old southern mansions and architecture. Downtown Columbia with its bakeries, boutiques, restaurants and coffee shops. The historic sights of Charleston, defined by pastel-colored houses, old southern plantations and Fort Sumter, where the opening shots of the Civil War were fired. And of course the Outer Banks close by, a chain of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina, with their open-sea beaches, state parks and shipwreck diving sites. Back in Germany, I took art as a major in secondary school. When I learned about Nouveau Réalisme, Dada and the Avantgarde, I was fascinated and encouraged to create my own art. When we studied the great Décollage artists Raymond Hains, Mimmo Rotella and François Dufrêne, I was impressed. My dream to become an artist began taking shape. The book cover Zickenballett was one of my Décollage art projects in German secondary school. The assignment was to create a cover for a book by Sabine Alt, an author and friend of my former art teacher Claudia Schönherr. After high school I wanted to study art. My parents – former hippies who had just started to become more conservative – talked me out of it. They told me to keep art as a passion and study something real. So I studied business administration and later worked in marketing for two large, well-known companies. During that time I had the chance to do wonderful campaigns with musicians, actors and sportsmen. A great learning journey.
After having found my Mr. Right I got married and started a family. In 2012 my husband was offered an assignment abroad and we moved to southern India. Living in India for over five years was one big adventure and sometimes very challenging. I met incredible people, in both positive and negative ways. The Indian people have a totally different lifestyle than we do. Punctuality is, due to their belief in reincarnation, not taken very seriously. That drove me totally crazy, especially at the beginning of our stay. I often waited for hours, days and sometimes weeks for people to come. When I called them they told me “We are late, very sorry, Madam!” , “OK, when will you be at our house?”, “One hour Madam!” Then, trusting them, I waited for hours. When no one showed up, I called again: “Hello Mister, I thought you would be at our place in 10 minutes? …Ohhhhh, yes Madam, I am so sorry, family emergency, my uncle died”. When I heard this story for the first time, I was shocked and felt very bad being so accurate about the timing. I apologized and told them to take their time. After a while I found out that Uncles and Aunties are dying all the time and that this tale is a common excuse. It was their lifestyle though that had the greatest impact on my own life. Working in marketing I was always driven to work to schedule and meet deadlines. I was living in constant hectic rush, pushing myself close to burnouts very often. They taught me to live and enjoy the moment, not to rush, and to be grateful for what you have achieved. I developed a peace of mind and a creativity I hadn't had for years.In 2017 we moved to Japan. A new beginning in an entirely different world and surrounding. Job-wise, I decided to start a new chapter and focus completely on my art project Hidden in Berlin. I decided to take my time. Since Maximilian and Marie went to kindergarten I had the morning hours to be creative, visit flea markets and antique shops and go to downtown Tokyo to buy paper, screens, paint, brushes and other material. I even found the time to fly to Seoul, Korea with my friends and visit Insadong, a great Bohemian part of town with a lot of artists, small galleries and cafés.I saw so many new places, met people from all over the world, experienced overwhelming natural sights and saw astonishing buildings old and new. The whole potential of my creativity was finally back.