(86) Blutwurst

How does one ‘process’ one’s past? With this work, Anna Darmstädter has sought to make herself and her artistic stance
enduring, once in a sculptural form using epoxy and once in a culinary one: this black pudding is made from Anna’s blood. Metaphorically, she creates her own flesh and blood and shapes her self-portrait as the end of the Darmstädter bloodline. Hardly any bodily fluid is as ambivalent and laden with meaning as blood: the source and substance of life on the one hand, revulsion and disease on the other. Standing in the tradition of German sausage-making, her work also points, in a broader context, to the tension that shapes one’s own identity, or: How German can one actually present oneself? How fragile is that which is preserved? This work is the end result of a futile search for a solidified personality (one that has congealed to the utmost).