About

LIFE AND EDUCATION

I was born in 1971 in Braunschweig West-Germany. My father, Dieter Martin, was a captain in the German army and died in 1978 in a helicopter accident. I left Germany in the age of 18 and went to Los Angeles where I worked as stripper. (1989-1991). In 1994 I gave birth to my son Jean-Luc. We had a car accident in 1999 in which my son died. During my social pedagogy study, I worked as varieté acrobat and performer. (1997-2000).

• 2017–now PhD Candidate Philosophical Aesthetics Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, supervisor Prof. Dr. Marc Rölli (Philosophy) Humboldt University Berlin, supervisor Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle (Art Theory)
• 2017 Graduate Seminar Architectural Theory Doctoral Education Programme of TU Delft Graduate School
• 2013 Dipl. Fine Art (Meisterschülerabschluss) Academy of Fine Arts Münster
• 2007 Post Graduate Seminar Art Theory Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam
• 2006 BA Fine Art AKI ArtEZ Academy for Art and Design Enschede
• 2003 Dipl. Social Pedagogy University of Applied Sciences Münster. Study included examens in psychology and didactics. Supervisor Prof. Dr. Bernhard Brugger (Psychology)

RESEARCH

I am used to switch between academic work and artistic practice. I studied fine art, pedagogy and aesthetics and are currently a PhD candidate in philosophical aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Germany. (Supervisor Prof. Dr. Marc Rölli) I taught since 2016 moving image theory at AKI Academy of Art and Design Enschede, affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem. Between 2015-2019 I was an Associated Member at the Cluster of Excellence, Interdisciplinary Laboratory - Image Knowledge Gestaltung at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. My current research gravitates around the concept of milieu as epistemological model for the inquiry of digital technology. My research interests are cultural theory, philosophy of technique and philosophy of nature. I published several articles and co-edited a volume on the body in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault in 2017.

ART PRACTICE

I explore unprecedented connections between identity art and significant formalistic movements. Patchwork blankets, textile objects, costumes, performances and videos are a reference to the canon of female artists. The featured materials, such as wax, latex and pvc (from inflatable sex-dolls), are intrinsically meaningful since they resemble human skin. However, I aim to frame these signfier, narratives and concepts in a formal way, to give my work aesthetic strength and intellectual openness. The composition  of my oeuvre, and that extends through all media, targets at a suspension which emerges from repetitive structure, the play of substitutions, classifications and reversals. I artificially create difference by means of the repetition of quasi-identical elements.

My synthetic method of patching and composing is necessarily preceded by the act of dissecting, disassembling and melting down. The new arranged objects are rough, display a violent needlework and visualise my personal struggle with the material. Here I see the originality of my works; it is my personal manner which unifies the aesthetic of vulnerability and discomfort with formal qualities and decorative beauty. My biography entails traumatic moments of loss and mourning. I assume that my play with the concept of pain is variably implicit in my work. Language of pain is most often a language of complaint and bereavement, but, like in this case, it can also be the language of carefully measured gestures as artistic mannerism.