What does it mean to wash my father's suits?

Anzugträger (Samstag ist Waschtag)

When the images of a childhood memory no longer match the experienced reality, a rupture occurred. In this difference the incisive experience of ageing and of time in general reveals itself. I experienced this rupture for the first time through my father. It was exactly at this point where I intervened and reconstructed the trip to the dry cleaner to have his suits dry cleaned. The childhood memory with the father figure is reactivated in the form of the suit through this performative action. The reconstruction results in an oscillation of time perception to such an extent that the present affects the past while the past simultaneously anticipates the future.

In Anzugträger (Samstag ist Waschtag) I explore questions of identity and existence through personal objects. Fragmentarily, biographical elements are linked with recognizable motifs and objects. The suits, previously worn by my father, were carried by me to the dry cleaner, endured, and ultimately placed into the exhibition space. Through dry cleaning, the suits were restored to a state of ‘back then’: they appear in pristine condition, just like back then. However, the traces of my father have been washed out.

The exhibition site becomes a temporal node in the biographical fabric, where the present offers itself as a portal through the past to the future. Minimal material interventions are juxtaposed with the relational restructuring and altering potential of dry cleaning.