Ich bin nicht aus Zucker | 2017

Sugar, 65 x 42 x 36 cm (lightbox 120 x 70 x 150 cm including cover), Cologne, Germany.

The project is supported by the academy of media arts in Cologne. It is also invited to the exhibition 'Shifting Moments' 05. March - 04. April 2021 in Choi&Lager Gallery in Cologne, 2021. 

Exhibition view in overstolzhausen

Exhibition view in Choi&Lager Gallery 

In this work, sugar is the medium that enables the symbiosis of two different concepts of its immortal materiality and non-homeostasis. The mental trauma that Freud talked about occurs when the defensive wall collapses because a state of homeostasis cannot be maintained. In German, there is an expression ‘Nicht aus Zucker sein’ ¹, which means that you are not very weak or vulnerable. In this expression, sugar is compared to a vulnerable emotional state and reveals a self-defense mechanism that denies it. The object is like an alter ego of the artist herself as it is through the process of refilling by pouring melted sugar into the mold many times, creating cracks due to temperature differences, and creating new layers filling up gaps. Yet, through the materiality of immortality, it contains indelible and alive memories like a transparent tattoo engraved on the body.

¹ e.g. A mother says to her child "you do not go out of the house in the rain. ", the child replies "yes, but I'm not sugar. " Since sugar dissolves in moisture, it is said that one is not sugar if one is not afraid of water and e.g. even without an umbrella goes through the rain. (decademic lexikon, [Online], http://universal_lexikon.deacademic.com/278075/Nicht_aus_Zucker_sein, [Accessed: 13 March 2018].)