Long-term project: Deep feminine

Discover the power of ancient femininity

Updates on the project

I present the project at a German online congress on the return of female arts in October 2024. This is a premiere in which I explain what pushed me to do the project and where I show photos.

In February and March 2024 I was travelling to South Africa to prepare an art residency and find collaborators with partners from the art world and communities there. My project was welcomed by the Pretoria Art Museum and the Makers’ Valley located in the Victoria Yards, where I will rent a studio space in downtown Johannesburg to continue the shooting. I’m currently looking for funding to be able to continue photographing the project there.

Lilith seduces hanging from a tree.

Concept

My medium is photography. I also work with audio files and text.

My aim is to awaken ancient femininity. I ask men and women the question: Where is your original femininity? Where can you feel it? How do you express it? Or how is it hidden or repressed? I want people to discover the ancient femininity within themselves. We have distanced ourselves from what makes us who we are and no longer hear our inner voice, the Deep Feminine.

Its expression is individual (in Europe) or rather collective, e.g. in South Africa, where I photographed and established contacts this year. You can feel the Deep Feminine powere in art, in music, in business or in people who shine.

In Europe, people live for themselves and often have lost touch with themselves, the community and nature. However, people seek community. They are born to share. But the world of capitalism aims for everyone to live alone. This increases consumption. Many people in the western world live too much outwardly and too little inwardly. They no longer find themselves and destroy nature by any means possible. As a result, they lose touch with their inner strength.

The Amazone Britta feels in synch when riding her horse.

In the economically poorer parts of South Africa's population, people live in communities. Without a tribe, without a collective, they would be miserable. They have no choice but to support each other. Their expression of the Deep Feminine is collective. The healers (Sangomas) there help people to rediscover these ancient powers. They bring them to their senses. They are in contact with the ancestors, who are fully integrated. They are very important for the community. We in the West have lost touch with our ancestors.

I am continuing  photographing the project and plan to exhibit it internationally. I feel a certain urgency to act. Society is too divided and the various systems of oppression, such as Apartheid in South Africa, totalitarian regimes like the former GDR and the resurgence of fascism worldwide, have oppressed people too much and continue to divide them. In South Africa, a woman is murdered every 2.5 hours. She is the weaker part of society. We have hardly any mechanisms to absorb these destructive dynamics and heal them as a society.

The Sangomas, Senzeni and Mama Phillisiwe dance during a ceremony, contacting the spirits of the ancestors guiding them in their healing work, Eshowe, South Africa, 2024.

The places where I have photographed the project so far were determined by my biography. I am German, live in France and have ancestors in Africa. I am a geographer and teacher by profession. Geography is everything that has to do with nature and people. I am interested in people who live in harmony with nature and (re)connect to it.