Karwath + Todisko at saasfee*pavillion, Frankfurt am Main
18.11. – 25.11.2022
Intervention,reduction, abstraction – for Karwath + Todisko, spatial parametersdetermine the work. In terms of subject matter, the artist is alsoconcerned with personal relationships within her family. She dealswith the actualities of life as well as interpersonal relationshipsand in doing so encounters patterns of behaviour whose causalconnections want to be explored. By deconstructing the respectivestructures, the artist explores their cause and effect. In thiscontext, Karwath + Todisko deals specifically with the lives of herparents.
Theexhibition "Heritage" (L187 Offenbach, 2020), for example,was dedicated to the relationship between the artist and her mother,whereas "Father" (saasfee*pavillon, 2022) delvesparticularly into the childhood experience of her father during theSecond World War as well as into the relationship with his father.
Inthe first step, Karwath + Todisko performs a spatial reconstructionby placing furniture from her parental home into the exhibitionspace. Everyday objects that become contact relics and shift what isprivate into the public sphere. In the second step, the titular videopiece "Father" allows an insight into the mind of herfather, who has been fascinated by trains since his earliestchildhood. From this fascination, he began to keep a photographictrainspotting archive, excerpts of which are presented as a slideshow in the video. At the same time, segments of a conversationbetween the two are played as a voice-over, in which the fatherspeaks primarily about his childhood, the war and the relationship tohis own father. In the process the ambiguity of his memories issubtly revealed. Photographs and mementos function as important aidsin the reconstruction of his experiences. Contrary to the impulse tosugarcoat and conceal her family‘s history, Karwath + Todiskoconsciously discloses that her grandfather was a member of the NSDAP(National Socialist German Workers’ Party). In doing so, she actsagainst both the shame and the stigma that might be feared from sucha public revelation. Above all, however, her goal is to addresssubjective experiences and the individual forms of remembrance inrelation to National Socialism and the war years, and to fightagainst forgetting.
Text by Vivien Kämpf and Lucy Rose Nixon
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