Wasta 2024
Jovita Majewski
„burning fee“, 2024
To mark the 200th anniversary of Franz Ferdinand Wallraf's death, the city of Cologne is celebrating the ‘Wallraf Year’ with the WASTA Street Art Festival, at which artists will illuminate and critically scrutinise various aspects of Wallraf.
Wallraf was a collector, guardian of culture and knowledge, priest, networker and had a lasting influence on the city of Cologne.
He was also a professor of botany and aesthetics at the old Cologne University and acquired 2,500 plants for the botanical garden at the time with his own funds.
However, he wrote his dissertation on fire, which had always fascinated him.
What would he think about fire today?
Surely the scientist would be just as fascinated by the element of fire today, but would see how the danger of forest fires increases every year.
The artist Jovita Majewski uses a single burning tree to remind us how protected we feel in many European city centres. Distanced from nature, we do not have to experience first-hand the consequences of climate change elsewhere on a daily basis. Heatwaves, floods and other climate crises are getting closer and closer. The time to act is now!
By the way: Museum Schnütgen, which is participating in WASTA, owes significant works to F.F. Wallraf's commitment.
FRED´S WALL 2021
Since Freddy is a very good friend of mine i asked him, if he wanted me to paint something on the big white wall on his roof terrace. He was excited and i gave him some options of paintings that would match a spot like this.
This is the one he fell in love with. The original piece is 50x50cm and this wall painting is about 5,60x5,30m big.
What a crazy week, but a wonderful project i will allways remember.
Workshops for future
Constantly I´m working with young people to show them how to raise their voice for political action against climatechange.
At a school in Monheim am Rhein I asked the pupils to paint selfportraits of themselfes in 10 years. It was shocking to see that most of them had a vision of a dystopian world behind them, without tress, with falling bombs, hunger and grey skies.
In Düsseldorf I had the great opportunity to get to know some fascinating young women, with whom i developed the idea of building sculptures out of trash we collected at the "Rhinecleanup" 2019.
At the Museum KIT in Düsseldorf we exhibited these sculptures out of old wood, bike-tires, bras, bottles etc. which looked like out of a fairytale at the first glimpse.
The fairytale will soon have an end.
Act now, raise your voice, make a change!
masquerade ball
The Masquerade Ball as a prelude to the annual exhibiton at the Academy of arts Düsseldorf was part of my graduation installation and could be seen as a big performance I created.
600 students, artists, professors and friends joined the unique gala in the auditorium of the academy of arts, creating a variety of imaginative
characters.
My Installation in the class room was filled with attributes of indiviuality (works>2016). Every part has been telling another story, as you can see in the stairpaintings, where the shadow doesn´t fit to the figure you see. The Intention in this case is the false, subjective look at the people surrounding us. It also refers to Plato´s allegory of the cave.
The biggest work in the installation was the 7 meter high mirror-tower in the middle, which you could enter and look up at the "crown of individualty", the winner mask of the masquerade ball.
I couldn´t find a better way to show the highest expression of individuality than giving 600 artstudents the opportunity to change their appearance and then letting them vote for the best among them!
The Video to the Masquerade Ball with Mr. Shirazy& The Exile Orchestra
Photos of the Masquerade Ball 2016 by Alessandro De MATTEIS & Houtan Nourian ©
Photos of the Masquerade Ball
Odonien 2014
Wallinstallation at the junk yard/ art space/club Odonien in 2014.
This installation was my special concept for the first moviefestival "Veedelsfilmfestival" in Cologne, Germany.
"etc."
2013 - 2014 in the Domstraße 91 in Cologne my friend and sister in heart Yuliya G. and I runned the gallery "etc.".
In one year we exhibited more than 20 artists, created installations, showed music performances etc..
Every exhibtion was a collaboration between us and the artist. So we changed the whole room and atmosphere for every exhibtion and people could allways join diverse installations which brought the art to other levels of understanding.
