Anette Becker
/ Dignity
Interview with the Artist
”Dignity,” another part of your installation, shows individual wounds of destruction of each one of your sculptures from ”Unresolved,” right?
Becker: Yes… I was deeply affected by the individuals who visited „Unresolved”. Those who experienced horrific destruction and who were victims of violence seemed to have a great desire to share their suffering: sometimes for the first time. I was very touched by the personal stories of these individuals… much more so than I have been in the past by reading newspapers or watching news reports only. I realized that the confrontation with each unique individual experience elicited empathy and understanding from me, which, in turn, provided some sense of validation for the sufferer. So, it seems that resolution starts with empathy and the mirroring of individual experiences in order to achieve some resolution. Each individual’s experience needs to be viewed as unique. And I needed to be personally affected by their suffering in order to feel it!
What would you deduct from this experience?
Becker: There is no collective resolution, only an individual one. And that individual resolution may lead to a collective resolution! I expressed this in my art by photographing every wound on every one of my sculptures. This produced 1.176 photos. The number of individual photos causes an overload in the observer, which results in a superficial judgment of the whole. The observer has to attend to each individual photograph and its uniqueness.
