…or do you love your blinders?

With the direct question “…or do you love your blinders?”, sculptor Cornelia Herfurtner refers to mechanisms of not wanting to see and blocking things out in our society. The artist asks how we behave in the face of the omnipresent visibility of violence and war. The exhibition title refers to the contradiction between relatively secure everyday life and global crises and alludes to strategies of self-isolation, numbness, and conscious distancing.

From this perspective, Herfurtner’s art intensively examines the legal concept of passive Bewaffnung [passive armament], which criminalizes the wearing of everyday protective items at demonstrations and illustrates how state order is based on control, perception management, and the restriction of self-protection in public spaces.

With her solo exhibition …or do you love your blinders? […oder liebst du deine Scheuklappen?], Herfurtner continues her research into political self-protection practices in public spaces and addresses how the boundaries between private and public spaces are shifting. In installations made of carved wooden reliefs, models, marquetry (wood inlay work), and dough impressions, the artist combines traditional craft techniques with current social issues. Her works illustrate how actions attributed to the private sphere—such as eating and sleeping—can take on political dimensions in public space. Herfurtner’s motifs and found objects from everyday life refer to reproductive activities, care work, and protest practices, revealing how perception, power, and social order are intertwined.

Curated by Tatjana Rotfuß