On travel / On the Mississippi

Photographs, Drawing, Video

„On travel“, Townhall Stuttgart, 18.11.-15.12.24

Excerpt from the introduction of Vivien Sigmund, November 15, 2024

It is often said—often with a warning wag of the finger—that when you travel, you always carry yourself in your luggage. The escape from one’s own self that one might hope for does not seem to become any more likely simply by crossing various national borders. What a stroke of luck for us art viewers! For the three GEDOK Stuttgart scholarship recipients, whose works we see here, have deliberately brought their artistic baggage with them on their journeys to Stuttgart’s sister cities and to Stuttgart itself, where they have enriched it in the most beautiful way with time—that rare commodity—and new impressions.

The work of Stuttgart-based artist Barbara Karsch-Chaieb is characterized by a wonderful ambivalence. For, on the one hand, the history of humanity and the world, preserved in the eternal realm of earth and rock, serves as their artistic inspiration. On the other hand, her work is characterized by process and mutability; what emerges is always also a reaction to the surrounding space. But perhaps this is not ambivalent at all, but rather a logical consequence, given that her works are composed, like sediments, of particles from their surroundings. In any case, her trip to St. Louis last year had almost the feel of a detective story, as Barbara Karsch-Chaieb followed in the footsteps of Karoline Friedericke Egler, the aunt of Karsch-Chaieb’s grandmother, who emigrated from Stuttgart to America in the 19th century. Starting with a photograph and an envelope, the artist combed through the archives and discovered that Karoline Friedericke Egler had become Carrie Jones through marriage and her new home. The portraits created based on the photograph now offer us artistic interpretations of this unknown woman—or simply possibilities of women named Carrie Jones. In any case, they are images brimming with inherent, captivating stories. In Karsch-Chaib’s photographs of “Abandoned Houses”—the many deserted and neglected homes that line American streets—past lives lie dormant alongside present-day desolation. Yet there is something almost pictorial, artistic, even collage-like about these former dwellings with their bright colors and boarded-up windows. In the photographs, function has become pure form; over time, life has become still life. Finally, in the mixed-media works on paper, we see the artist’s exploration of the landscape and its multifaceted connections to people and their culture, to the present and the past, and to space and its transformation.

Mit: Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb, Pia Maria Martin, Julia Ciolkowska,

Photo Credits Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb
VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb.