Katarina Zdjelar: Borderwork

Hold my breath, then take in air, hands part-raised in a mini-lament, up on the balls of both feet. I do not want to suggest my gallery-going is all dance improv, but I have this project to register, record and dwell upon my encounters with the work of artist Käthe Kollwitz. It could be in a group exhibition in London, new and old monographs, online remains, the artist’s journals and letters, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann, or a poem-bio of her life by Muriel Rukeyser. To view the animated films of South African artist William Kentridge as if Kollwitz’s own charcoal drawings had come alive.

It accumulates, repeats, obsesses, this interest in Kollwitz’s work, always back to the physical shock of her art: that love, grief, suffering, protest of bodies drawn, carved, etched and sculpted, a physical contagion I am exposed to, until my body moves in a moment Kollwitz enables.