My home is a dark and cloud-hung land, 2011

My home is a dark and cloud-hung land (Nr. 1–2)
2011
LightJet print, 80 x 120 cm
Edition 6 + 2 ap


The photo works were created in the context of the four-channel film installation My home is a dark and cloud-hung land (2011), which is thematically bound to the German concept of ‘Heimat’ (homeland). Rosefeldt focusses on the forest as a central and ambivalent motif, omnipresent in German history and culture. As in American Night (2009), the landscape becomes identity-establishing. Whereas the vastness of the Wild West embodies the sentiment of freedom and capture, the German forest nourishes a close and partly frightening rapport to nature by symbolising protection and danger at the same time. The work echoes the numerous interpretations of the forest in philosophy and poetry since the Roman era, always circling around the subject as a symbol of German nationality and identity.

The installation constitutes an eclectic tour de force through German history and offers, just as The Ship of Fools (2007) does, a multi-layered approach to the contemporary problematic dealing with the German national sentiment. Through the fictitious figure of a theatre director setting up a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a performance in the midst of the forest, Rosefeldt creates a surreal collage of mythic creatures, Grimm’s fairy tales, operas, romantic sentiments, Roman and Nazi history – all taking place simultaneously. The dichotomy of culture and nature is dissolved and a huge theatrum mundi emerges in the light of the forest.

Summarised from Mirjam Wenzel, in: Heimatkunde: 30 Künstler blicken auf Deutschland (2011)


Exhibitions / Catalogues

My home is a dark and cloud-hung land (Nr. 2):
– Julian Rosefeldt. Manifesto. Works 2005–2017, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, September–December 2017
– Julian Rosefeldt. Deep Gold, Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid, February–April 2017
– Paisaje Prestado, Galería Juan Silió, Santander, June–August 2016
– 4th Mediations Biennale, When Nowhere Becomes Here. Berlin Heist, Poznan, September–October 2014
   (curated by Shaheen Merali & Kerimcan Güleryüz; catalogue)
– Julian Rosefeldt – Meine Heimat ist ein düsteres, wolkenverhangenes Land, Arndt Berlin, July–August 2014

Literature

Bertz, Inka, ed. Heimatkunde. 30 Künstler blicken auf Deutschland. Exh. cat. Jüdisches Museum, Berlin. Munich, 2011.
Yen-In Chen, Mei-ching Fang, eds. Julian Rosefeldt: World-Making. Film and Photo Works 2001–2011. Exh. cat. Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
Taipei, 2012.