Inventor of photograph stitching Annegret Soltau turns 80 | EUROtoday

There are – for causes – few German artists born in 1946, and if they’re, they nearly at all times carry a burden. Annegret Soltau was born into this unusual mildew yr, however she by no means met her father, who had been lacking for the reason that finish of the conflict. Since 2003, one among her long-term tasks in at the moment 69 chapters has revolved across the lacking individual, one of many huge gaps in her life.

Such empty areas should be stuffed, as they in any other case gape like open wounds, and so Soltau grew to become a fantastic artist in stitching up and stitching over wounds and all conceivable accidents within the type of photographs. This partly auto-aggressive work with one’s personal physique, which has meant a re-appropriation for feminine artists for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, since feminine nudity was lengthy solely used as a present worth for principally male painters, nearly pressured a swap from the canvas to images and movie.

Her photograph sewings from 1975 onwards, initially self-portraits of her personal physique, with the at all times seen “scars” made from black thread, in a way Soltau’s drawing pencil, at the moment are world-famous and dangle within the largest collections. Last yr’s retrospective “Unzensiert” within the Frankfurt Städel was simply as justified successful with the general public as was its belated recognition in lots of circumstances. Soltau had already captured his personal metamorphosis throughout being pregnant in 1977 within the fashionable medium of video. In “Mother-Glück” she inserted herself with a needle and thread into the fragmented picture of her daughter in passport photographs and thru this stitching she made clear the inextricable interweaving of the mom and the kid, much like the more and more summary new child in “Symbiosis” from 1981.

The final questions of the human situation what issues them is the autobiographical seek for fact, the gaping depths between generations, and violence between folks. Fortunately, her “personal identity” collection continues to be unfinished: she hung official certificates of her identification as a girl, mom, artist and citizen on a clothesline as an indication of a busy life. Since 2003, like Arcimboldo, she has stuffed the contours of her portrait with fragments of every kind of paperwork corresponding to passports, financial institution playing cards and SIM playing cards. The closing stitching of this intimate oeuvre will likely be carried out by her daughter posthumously: together with her demise certificates. This Friday Annegret Soltau turns eighty and has in all probability come rather a lot nearer to a few of the fact.