"At the Beginning and at the End"
The installation At the Beginning and at the End consists of two distinct bodies of work: two pieces from the installation Deep Touch Pressure, and the series Sisters.

Deep Touch Pressure

The group Deep Touch Pressure originally consists of four participatory objects and emerged from a personal crisis, a human loss I experienced. It reflects my inner state and processes during that time.

In this phase, I increasingly engaged with neurological processes — especially the relationship between sensory stimuli and the psyche. The technique of deep touch pressure refers to a specific type of stimulation of the nerves in the skin (you may recognize this from a hug: a hug can relax us, both physically and mentally. Or the comforting weight of a heavy blanket or vest).
Deep touch pressure has a direct effect on the central and endocrine nervous systems, producing a calming, anxiety-reducing, and stress-relieving effect.

Since the central themes in my work are connection, touch, and communication — all inherently physical — creating an object that could be touched and that actively includes the sense of touch was a logical step in the development of this body of work.

• "Mother's Home" represents shelter, cocooning, an embrace.

• "Time" describes the search for an isolated space, the longing to suspend time — an empty zone in which internal investigations can take place.

• "There is nobody other than me" confronts the self. It reflects the inner necessity to give oneself a counterpart when no one else is there.

• "How does it feel" concludes this cycle. What remains is the body's own experience. It marks an end — but also a new beginning, as it can be combined and linked to the other works.

One object is wearable, made of lead, foam, and leather, weighing around 8 kg. It distributes weight evenly across the body.

Sisters

The initial concept for Sisters emerged from a phase of longing — for physicality and sensuality — and from work on various projects centered around desire.
It is both a reaction to Deep Touch Pressure and a response to the invitation to create an artist statement at the Semmelweis Clinic (Parallel Vienna 2021). I decided to create this three-part work specifically for that space, focusing on the process of the emergence of life.

• The first work marks the beginning of creation: "Drippin' all over you"

• The second represents the process itself: "Troubles(?) in the making"

• The third: "As from the beginning" — creation is ready to be handed over.

The forms are intuitively drawn lines in space, inspired by organs and utopian organisms.
The pink of the grapefruit stands for the body, for flesh; yellow is a pole of energy, the driving force behind the utopian body.

The Dialogue Between the Two Series

Juxtaposing the two series responds to the history of the building and its name.
Birth marks an entry point into life — just as death marks an exit. The two often lie close together, especially in the realm of medicine.

Ignaz Semmelweis identified the cause of the spread of puerperal fever.
He discovered that doctors, having just dissected a corpse, would assist in childbirth without washing their hands, thereby transmitting deadly germs and bacteria. As a result, Semmelweis recommended disinfecting hands and medical instruments with chlorine.
But in his lifetime, Semmelweis’s findings were largely ignored — partly because people did not believe in what they couldn’t see, but also because doctors could not accept being the source of so many deaths. Doctors were considered gentlemen — and gentlemen were assumed to have clean hands.

Although Semmelweis could demonstrate in practical experiments that mortality rates during childbirth dropped from 18–30% to 2% and eventually to 0%, hardly anyone was willing to adopt his method. One might get the impression that women’s lives simply weren’t considered valuable enough to implement a method that had not yet been fully understood — even if it had clearly proven effective and cost almost nothing.

Only long after his death was the importance of Semmelweis’s research gradually acknowledged.
Today, his work forms a key part of the development of asepsis (sterility).

This historical context opened up for me the problem of two-tier medicine — where women and those perceived as female still do not receive the same quality of care as men. That’s why I found it important to address this history in the artist statement — because true equality in medical care still hasn’t been achieved.

The Space

Traces of use in the former nurses’ room are still visible.
Instead of erasing them, I chose to consciously claim and reshape the space through targeted interventions — creating a stage, a microcosm between pleasure and decay.