Anette Becker

Preface fom the Artist

I have a clear purpose for all my projects, which ­usually involves the making conscious of past historical and psychological traumata. Within this context, I explore contradictory human emotions and experiences and attempts to provide ways of resolving these contradictions. ”Unresolved” symbolizes the two extremes of human experience – being a victim or being a perpetrator – and the struggle of individuals and societies to reconcile the two.

By creating different parts for ”Unresolved,” I attempted to create several phases of safe contexts within which visitors may experience ­conflicting emotions and gain a glimpse of their ­resolution through vary­ing perspectives. It is important to mention that I am not interested in making an example out of a specific incident, era, or particular society. In fact, the events do not really matter, because the human experiences of distruction and ­loosing the human rights are ­universal. There­fore, a particular topic, such as “Unresolved,” serves as the vehicle through which the ­purpose of my work can be expressed. I have exhibited with huge success all over Germany with my last installation being exhibit­ed in Dresden, in time for the 60th ­anniversary of the destruction of the city.

My art elicits, at times, long ­forgotten emotions tied to traumatic historical and psychological events. I then invites individuals, families and groups to revisit ­these events and their resulting emotions without judgment or apology. I hope that eventually, individuals will be able to change their perceptions entirely towards love and forgiveness. This perception of love and ­forgive­ness is the most important step towards resolution of trauma. 

At conclusion of the exhibition in Dresden, after hours upon hours of inter­actions with and observations of thousands of visitors, I decided to bring ”Unresolved” to other places, with the experience of distruction in its history. As I use my ­projects as symbols only to depict the results of the human extremes, “Unresolved” would be applicable (for example) to all the palces of the Second World War and to places of the newer history, like Sarajevo or New York. It is my hope that this exhibit may facilitate a new ­dialogue towards resolution, as it did for ­visitors of ”­Unresolved” in Dresden.