About

I was born in 1983 in North Rhine-Westphalia. I grew up in Berlin, where I moved with my family in 1986. 
One day a friend of mine painted a picture from a photo to apply for the visual communication degree programme. At that moment I realised that I wanted to become an artist and I decided to apply to study art. It was a moment when I felt what art meant to me, that through art I could visually represent my way of seeing the world, my way of thinking, and that I wanted to use this power. My great motivation for me was also to create, preserve and pass on something beautiful, such as craft traditions.

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I was very excited about the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) when I first visited, because of the beautiful old building and the garden, it felt like the right place for me. I applied and everything seemed to fall into place.

My first tools were an analogue camera, drawing and painting materials. I learned analogue photography better at the UdK and through my friend, who was studying photography at the time. We developed our colour photos together in the lab where he worked, and my black and white photos could be developed in the lab at the university.

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I also work with Super 8, medium format cameras and expanded my knowledge in film and video shooting. I studied New Media in the class of Hito Steyerl. During my year abroad at the Art Academy in Helsinki, Finland in the Time and Space department I also worked with sound. I took a course there with Shinji Kanki where we built instruments with electronic piezo components and worked with sound.

 

I finished my art studies as a master student in Hito Steyerl's class with my multimedia installation consisting of photography and an installation with sound and a birdcage. The photographer Andreas Mühe bought the photographs of my work.

 

I had a great interest in the traditional craft of textiles, especially weaving. In Berlin, I had seen an exhibition of textile works by an artist who had studied in Sweden. I decided to study fashion design because I could learn different techniques there and I had already become aware of Frank Leder, a German fashion designer, during my art studies, who inspired me a lot. I contacted Frank Leder and applied for an internship. Fortunately, I was able to do an internship with Frank Leder.

 

I went to Amsterdam to study abroad and learnt a lot about different techniques. Especially the pattern making and draping of clothes on a mannequin was taught intensively there, but also the creation of digital patterns with the creation of 3D models with which the direct visual realisation of a garment in a fabric can be represented.

 

I completed my studies on the topic of producing a valuable fabric. My product is a handwoven stola (a typical cloth worn in Chile, which you can hang over the shoulders to keep you warm) made from Baby Brushed Alpaca which I sourced from a Peruvian alpaca farm. The yarn is brushed which makes it similar to mohair yarn, which is particularly unsuitable for weaving. And I was advised against it by Dagmar (Handgewebt in Berlin), my teacher. But I fell in love as soon as the yarn from Peru arrived. It was the most beautiful yarn I had ever seen. I quickly became aware of the problem with this yarn; it got tangled together when weaving because of the fine hairs it had everywhere. I had to develop a special technique to weave it, this technique based on different patterns required a lot of patience and separating the panels by hand. But all my time and effort invested in making this stola was worth it.

 

Alpaca has special properties and is also suitable for people with allergies to animal hair. It is hypoallergenic and contains less lanolin (wool fat). The properties of the alpaca fiber is that it has an insulating effect due to the living conditions of the alpacas, which have to adapt to extreme temperature differences, from - 30 degrees to + 30 degrees. This means that the alpaca fiber keeps you warm when it's cold and cool when it's hot. The alpaca yarn I use comes from the ecologically friendly yarn line from Michell Alpaca in Peru. I learned to weave with a table loom from Dagmar from Handgewebt in Berlin. I completed my thesis by founding my own sustainable model label IK. The stola is the first product of my Textiles with my own label IK and is called My Baby`s Stola because the Baby Brushed Alpaca yarn is so soft and delicate that you feel so comfortable and warmly snuggled up, like being embraced by a loved one.

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In 2020 I went to Portugal to learn more about the textile traditions in Portugal and to further develop my independent work as an artist and designer.

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