The Colony Diary in Nika Language
I made The Colony Diary in Nika Language (2019) in a bilingual community in southern Carinthia. I wrote it in a Bantu language (Nika) with the help of a Nika-English dictionary (1884) dating from shortly before the beginning of colonial rule in East Africa. The work raises questions about language as a means of communication and recording, but also as a potential instrument of power or a means of exclusion. (read more)
In 2025 The Colony Diary in Nika Language was shown in dialogue with the Buttinger Collection at the Klagenfurt University Library as part of the project "I am the grass. Let me work.“, a decentralized exhibition within the framework of the Year of remembrance 2025, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the victory over National Socialism in Carinthia (read more).
The presentation of the Buttinger collection with a card catalog and seventeen selected books (list of exhibited books) was curated by Alina Zeichen (UNIKUM) and Gudrun Ratzinger. The collection contains approximately 50,000 books that fundamentally oppose Nazi ideology and were collected by Joseph Buttinger, an Austrian socialist, after fleeing National Socialism.
2019/2025
Installation.
Shellac based ink, paper from a notebook, sewing thread, passe-partout, glass, Nika-English dictionary, wooden panels and slats.
Two metal card catalog cabinets of the Buttinger Collection, seventeen books.
I am the grass. Let me work. Klagenfurt/Celovec, Austria.
Curated by Gudrun Ratzinger.
Artists: Rosa Andraschek, Nilbar Güreş, Tatiana Lecomte, Edith Payer, Julius Pristauz.
The Buttinger Collection
I am the grass. Let me work. Exhibition.
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