In my work „Gegenwind“, 2022, I install a paravent-like room divider (Paravent=“wind screen“) in one room to create another, inaccessible room that remains hidden from the visitor.
Just as the screen was also historically used as a picture support, the entire outer wall of my extra-long screen, set up in a circle, shows an oversized, intertwined network of hands. These are my own hands, as well as hands of people close to me. The hands are intertwined, clinging to each other, only at one point do they slide apart, here the structure seems to break open.
The installation, which can be circled, appears stable but consists of fragile wooden frames covered with canvas that could easily be knocked over or broken through. The viewer is confronted with the problem of not being able to enter a delimited space. The search for a passage or way tempts one to walk around the installation, accompanied by the impression of the changing hand scenery depending on the location.
My work expresses different feelings linked to certain experiences of the last few years, which had an influence on my environment, but also on my personal life situation and development. It came into being during the disturbing time of the Corona Lockdown, when everything was closed off. Especially social contacts were reduced to a minimum and one was mostly confronted with frightening media reports.
Normally, I personally would have liked to break free from existing fixed structures at this time, which on the one hand gave me support, but on the other hand also restricted me. In my installation, I have portrayed this urge and the feeling of wanting to let go of something in a painterly way by means of these hands. Hands are eloquent, expressing wordlessly through certain movements any feelings and sensations such as joy and affection but also fear, alienation, rejection and despair. I chose the form of the screen because it best illustrates the spatial situation of inclusion and exclusion. At the same time, it also illustrates the fragility of all manmade constructs.screens are structures in space that stand for withdrawal and „hiding behind something“, which in mywork, however, is reduced to absurdity in its closed form.
In these last few years, individual borders have changed and in general, the view of the borders of the whole world has intensified, which has led me to question many things more intensively.
Photos: Copyright Daniela Beranek