Hidden Portrait

Final exhibition of the Pilotenküche Resident Artists

Künstler:innen: Hwaran Cho, Anna Hemmerich, Carrie Foulkes, Blake Malone, Moonassi, Aura Roig, Carlos Silva, Eva ten Have, Tianna Therriault

Ars Avanti, Alte Handelsschule, Leipzig, Germany, 2024

In autumn 2024 I was an artist in residence at Pilotenküche, where I researched Leipzig’s history as a centre of publishing. During sessions in the letterpress studio at the Museum für Druckkunst, the local printing museum, I learned about the history of Fraktur, a kind of gothic or blackletter font originally developed in France, which closely mirrors the handwriting of monks who transcribed Bibles and other scriptures.

Fraktur gained popularity in Germany from the 1500s onward. However, in the 1930s it become linked to fascism, as much of the early Nazi propaganda was printed using this typeface. Hitler banned Fraktur in 1941, favouring more legible fonts, but the typeface remains associated with fascism, a lasting stigma that overshadows its aesthetic beauty and rich pre-Nazi history. This tension inspired a new series of prints using blackletter fonts, reflecting on words, immaterial ideas and their tangible impact on the world.

During my three months in Leipzig, I reflected on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent economic and social shifts experienced in the region. I spoke with people who experienced the German reunification first hand. They gave me insight into the impacts of these vast systemic changes that forced people to reconsider their identities within new ideological frameworks.

For my final exhibition I thought about how words express and shape world views that justify and maintain social divisions, while also examining how language can be transformed into a tool for personal and collective creativity and renewal.

I printed a series of concrete poems on the letterpress. In concrete poetry the meaning of a text is found in the layout, the typographical elements, so you can use words as a visual material. One of my prints features a block of text made with the words ‘Wand’ (wall) and ‘Wandel’ (change). I also used bricks and local beeswax to make some sculptural pieces, as well as taking analogue photographs that I printed in the photo studio at HALLE 14 Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Kunst.

My presentation Im/material Structures comprised mixed media pieces using beeswax, bricks from a historic factory building, photographs and letterpress prints to articulate ideas of creating, destroying, repurposing and transcending walls.