Barbara Nies

When she was a little girl, Norwegian author Siri Hustvedt was once asked by her father if she knew where "yonder" was. She replied that "yonder" was another word for "there." Her father smiled and said, "No, yonder is between here and there." This story opens up an intermediate space that is also a free space, a space of vagueness and uncertainty in which one thing does not yet apply and another no longer applies.

The central theme of the exhibition "Home for the Heart," which straddles the boundaries between painting, photography, and installation, is the feeling of emotional belonging: residence, house, home, refuge, shelter, or apartment, sanctuary, domicile, or home are all listed in the dictionary as possible synonyms for home.

In the perception of this "home base," where one's own state of mind develops, manifests itself, and is constantly stabilized, it becomes possible to open up to the in-between, to existence without a shell, appearance, or role.

With the help of a wide variety of creative means, "Home for the Heart" explores this space and its changing qualities, its special possibilities in what is initially only intuited between temporal and emotional gaps—it is about pauses in existence, about breaks and involuntary lingering: about grappling with one's own attribution of meaning and significance between memory and expectation.