Michél Kekulé - Mutterland

In the ongoing series “Mutterland" the photographer Michel Kekulé — a “post-reunification” child — describes his inner connection to the provincial area in the East, where he was partially raised. It is a silent, monochromatic contemplation of injustice and pain, betrayed hopes and false promises in the lost landscapes, decaying regions, and people of the former GDR.

The feeling of inevitable and heavy loss, as well as generations searching for their identity, shaped by a country that no longer exists. Dissonances that tear apart, recurring existential fears. An echo of contemporary history, the space between two worlds, and the question of the lives that could have been.

Exhibition view: 2024, Mutterland, "Signals" Kunsthalle Konstanz | © Torben Nüdling

Exhibition view: 2023, Mutterland, „East from where“, Studio Hanniball, Berlin | © Xiaofu Wang

Exhibition view: 2024, Mutterland, "Signals" Kunsthalle Konstanz | © Torben Nüdling

Exhibition view: 2023, Mutterland, „East from where“, Studio Hanniball, Berlin | © Xiaofu Wang

A short essay by curator and art historian Nina Maier (Kunstmuseum Thurgau) on Mutterland:

The ongoing series Mutterland, which began in 2019, is Michél Kekulé's thesis project.

Set in the eastern German province, in a town in Thuringia, to which Michél Kekulé, as a "post-reunification child," has a personal connection, the black-and-white photographs exude a quiet, slightly melancholic atmosphere.

They depict portraits of places, spaces, and people from the former GDR and draw attention to the impact of history on the present. The 1990s and 2000s were characterized by promises of 'blooming landscapes' and hopes that were not fulfilled after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many regions were or are in decline.

In the media, as a result of unemployment and missed opportunities for reunification, there was talk of the so-called 'baseball bat years'. This hashtag was established in 2019 by journalist Christian Bangel, under which a collection of memories quickly emerged on Twitter. Reports accumulated of right-wing violence in the post-reunification years. These retrospective accounts made it clear that these were not isolated experiences, but rather a generational experience.

Mutterland is a kind of socio-documentary portrait of a society that hovers somewhere between past and future. Michél Kekulé captures the current state of this place in Thuringia, reflecting on the influence of reunification to this day. Although German reunification was over 30 years ago, there is still often a distinction made between West and East Germany in public discourse. There are still economic, social, and structural differences between the old and new federal states. The term "Wendeverlierer" (losers of reunification) is used.

Against this background, Mutterland functions like a visual inventory, reflecting the status quo but at the same time making visible something that has long since passed.

In the images of Mutterland, a sense of loss and the search for identity is palpable. It echoes the memory of a country that no longer exists but has certainly left its mark and shaped its people. The work deals with the inheritance of losses and traumas across generations and raises the question of how history is processed and passed on.

In this respect, the theme of the work also corresponds to photography, the medium in which it is negotiated: It has, like photography itself, a presence in the present, but at the same time, what it makes visible belongs to the past. In the case of Mutterland, the relationship between the layers of time is even more acute because the series shows something that was no longer there at the time of capture but is still visible and tangible.

Mutterland is, so to speak, an echo of the past in the present.