E I A conversation, Eden, 2022

A: How did you come up with EDEN?

V: I had an urgent need for inner peace, and beauty. I was looking for an antidote to this numbness I had begun to feel. The last two years have such a taste of passing, illness and suffering - I think you can almost smell it.. At some point I just had enough and started to search for my inner Eros.

A: Where do you find it?

V: For example in the garden of my childhood. For me, the garden is a symbol for a place of fantasy and it also reflects a certain longing. In terms of cultural history, the garden has a very long tradition and has always been - like art - a form of human expression. For me, it also describes the desire to reconnect with nature, with something sublime. The best example of this is Eden.

A: But isn‘t that a failed mission? After all, people are banished from the Garden of Eden?

V: No, not at all! I think the story is not quite finished yet. Eden is in us. I agree with an observation Tracey Emin once made when she was working on her „grottos“: „I realized I was already as close to nature as I could be - because I am with me. I am nature!“ I felt that very much. Then I understood that we have Eros, the life energy, within us. We just have to find a way to draw it out.