Malka Germania, 2021

Malka Germania, commissioned by the Jewish Museum Berlin, investigates the longing for collective redemption as a response to an age of anxiety. Malka Germania is Hebrew for “Queen Germania.” The name makes reference to an unusual female designation for the Messiah: “Malka Meshichah,” or the “Annointed Queen.” The Messiah has come to Berlin and thus to the historic epicenter of Jewish, Israeli, and German collective memory. Instead of experiencing immediate redemption, the city is haunted by its residents’ collective subconscious: their dreams, fears, and memories. The work investigates the longing for collective redemption as a response to an age of anxiety. The piece portrays subconscious elements, gray areas, and ambiguities of contemporary German-Jewish experience through the artistic medium. At the same time, it attempts to disrupt a fixed iconography and to deconstruct identities - the past and future implode into an alternative present.