Die Verführung [The Temptation]
Installation | 2011
Funded by the Postgraduate Funding of Thuringia
Since 2003 the artist Peggy Schneider has been studying and preserving wallpaper as an historic document of everyday life in the former GDR. Based on her memories of »what it was like«, she created something new and different.
The precursors of wallpaper today can be traced back to the origins of cave paintings and cliff drawings. An example is the archaeological site »Cueva de las Manos« [Cave of the Hands] in Argentina. The images on the walls are not merely silent companions but historical documents and reflections of ourselves. Peggy Schneider’s artwork »Die Verführung« [The Temptation] was inspired by the penned outline of a hand on wallpaper, which she discovered in 2009 in an abandonedgarrison in Nohra/Thuringia and was able to preserve photographically.
Both the wallpaper and the traced outline of a left hand on the wall are remnants and traces of something that once existed, of past generations of a different culture. The comparison between the cave paintings in Argentina and the drawing on the photographed wallpaper demonstrates how humans have been using objects and applying symbols in similar ways since prehistoric times.