The starting point for this site-specific work is my research on Persian ornamentation and its history. This work is made of silk threads from Afghanistan that my friend Kati gave to me as a gift to use in my art. She persuaded her grandmother to give me these precious yarns that she had brought with her upon escaping the country in 1979 due to the Russian invasion. My chosen form for this work is a fragment from an ornament in one of the most famous mosques of the ancient Persian Empire – Mazar e sharif.

It is said that Zarathustra is buried there. In a series of crocheted and embroidered ornaments on museum cardboard, I distilled these fragments and exhibited them in a closed church which is now used as an venue for contemporary art. This church, which is set between two adjacent apartment buildings, does not have any windows and therefore relies on several air shafts distributed throughout the church for air supply. To me, these air shafts were the most important elements of this nave space. To highlight them and bring them into conscious view, I gilded the grid that covered them, thereby turning them into an ornament that engages in a dialogue with my ornamentation pieces from the Islamic Mosque.

Ventilation shaft, site-specific work, gold leaf on cross perforated metal plate, given-as-gift-material, exhibition view, Fraud, Fake and Fame,
St. Johannes-Evangelist, Berlin 2016