“The Collectors Room” was created as part of the exhibition “The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Yet Another Present”.

I was invited to engage in a dialogue with works of Classical Modernism from 1918 to 1944, a period of artistic upheaval, but also of political repression. At that time, art served as a space for experimenting with utopian ideas and for reflecting on an uncertain future.

Building on this, I developed a site-specific work that incorporates fragments of historical print media. For example, medical tissue illustrations from the 1980s, daily newspapers from the 1940s, and discarded art catalogs from the 1950s, materials that, in various ways, embody memory, knowledge, and temporality.

These elements enter into a dialogue with works from the mumok collection.

For example, I cut out a fragment of a reproduction of a Brancusi sculpture, originally printed on catalog paper, and enlarged it onto fabric. Upon closer inspection, the reflection of a studio can be seen in the enlarged reproduction. Opposite hangs a photograph by Edward Steichen showing Brancusi in his studio. With this visual shift, I wanted to reveal how images and meanings circulate over time, change, and gain or lose significance.

At the same time, “The Collectors Room” addresses the human impulse to collect. Collecting can be related to a desire for control, but also to the need to preserve things before they disappear. Especially in times of war, censorship, and manipulated information, collecting becomes a political act. For me as an artist, it is an attempt to counteract forgetting. For when history is suppressed, rewritten, or erased, it is often archives, collections, or individual images that determine what remains and what disappears.