YOUTH

The photographical and theoretical project  Y O U T H  focusses on the structures of rural living together - the locality, the country road, the freeway access, the schoolyard, the football ground, the club house - by means of the hessian village Willingshausen.  The target audience is the village-youth, whose centre of life is the area, but also young people, who are confronted with the decision to give up the country life for an urban one. The work challenges identification and interconnectedness, team play and group dynamic in local groups, clubs and circles of friends. What part play the social networks and what part the traditional festivities. The project consists of eight group portraits of different youth-groups and clubs, observations of the local area, landscape and architecture, as well as archive-photographs by the local artist-colony. The group portraits, staged in front of a black background, are inspired by the early Dutch group portrait paintings of the 17th century and the local archive-material. But instead of traditional dresses or uniforms, the teenagers present themselves with labelled workday clothes and team-shirts. Fashion-logos, club-logos or theme shirts create a new membership. The photographs are titles as such: BURSCHENSCHAFT, FREIWILLIGE JUGENDFEUERWEHR or YOUTH.

The project is based on a three-month artist scholarship in Willingshausen, Germany.

Watch the video ZIG GE, HELL RIDERS, YOUTH here

Exhibition:

Kunsthalle Willingshausen, Germany

05.05. - 03.06.2018

Billboards in Wasenberg, Merzhausen and Loshausen, Germany

18.05. - 28.05.2018

EXAMEN documenta Halle Kassel, Germany

13.12. - 16.12.2018

photography, design, writing, print, web, exhibition, publication