used drywall panels, worn work clothes, cardboard, paper,
wood, carpet, 4-channel sound installation (4 exciters attached to plaster boards)
dimensions variable (around 50m2)
HfBK Dresden, Germany
July, 2025
As someone who grew up in a family of construction workers, I felt the presence of the construction site at home. The stories I listened to centered on hidden fears, suppressed frustrations, and a quietly carried sense of shame.
This fragility contrasts with the toxic masculinity often associated with construction sites, which for me are both unsafe and magnetic: I see the construction worker as a sensitive father figure but also as a sexual archetype, whose sweat and roughness are at once threatening and seductive.
In recent years, I have been collecting discarded second-hand “1-man boards” (Ein-Mann-Platte, 60 cm × 200 cm). They mostly belonged to people who had intended to build something but died before they could. I also collect workers’ clothing that no longer belongs to its owners. Displayed in a large wardrobe, these objects recall my childhood fantasy of wardrobes as portals to secret worlds.
The boards and the clothes are meant to isolate, protect, clad, and conceal. In my work, bodies express their intimacy through narrowness, heat, and sweat. I want to penetrate rational building materials with care and tenderness, revealing how fragile the things that seem solid can be. The hardest can become soft, and the softest hard.