Provoking new meanings, re-imagining old objects: Thorsten Brinkman speaks about his artistic sojourn in Yemen

Things he finds in the environment that surround him trigger German artist Thorsten Brinkmann’s pieces: refrigerators, couches, chairs, what society considers “waste” is used, reused, and re-imagined as a piece of art. A student of Visual Communication and Fine Arts in Germany, Brinkmann participated in numerous exhibitions around the world producing pieces in collective and solo exhibitions. His work shows a close relationship between objects and people, a relationship that can be experienced these days at the National Museum in Sana’a, where Brinkmann is exhibiting his latest work: “Cool Sana’a” or “Burj al-Safia.” 

Yemen Observer (YO): - What is the idea behind the “Cool Sana’a” tower made of refrigerators that is currently being exhibited at the National Museum?
Thorsten Brinkmann (TB): -In this piece I tried to combine important things that impressed me when I arrived here to Yemen. This is how I work, I go to places with nothing and I work with objects I can find there. I try to get an idea of what is going on in the place in this way; I go to the places where I will exhibit, I look at the space I have to put an installation or a sculpture. It is a reaction of all those elements together: museum, space, culture, what can I get there, and a process that develops when I come here. In this case I saw a lot of refrigerators, they are already like towers in some stores, and I saw a lot of people chewing qat as well. I was a little surprised by this but at the beginning I did not have this idea prepared, I just saw a pillow at the store of the refrigerator’s dealer and I asked him if I could have the pillow because it looked very nice. He reacted saying no because it was ‘his’ qat pillow. Then, I suddenly had the idea, I wanted to stick the pillow on the refrigerator and that is how the entire thing started to grow. That is just the way it works, I try to combine and change a little bit the meaning of things just using objects and putting them in another space, another spot, trying to give it a new meaning. That is how it grows.
 

YO: - In your pieces you collect what society discards, things that can be considered as waste, is this idea also present in the piece you made in Sana’a?
TB: -The idea of reusing objects? Yes, of course. I work all the time like this, trying to use things that don’t have any value anymore, giving them a new meaning when I put them in an artistic context. In this way, the meaning of things changes and their value changes as well. I tried to do this here as well, but in Sana’a, the experience was very different because in Germany for instance, people throw many things away and in a much quicker way than they do it here. In Germany people buy new things, they use them and when they are not that new anymore, not fashionable anymore, or just a little bit broken, they give them away and they buy a new thing. The time of things is very short and here I have the feeling that the time of things is endless. Also the process things go through is really different: they are renewed, reused, they try to do from three refrigerators a new one using pieces from all of them that are useful for another one. It becomes something else and you also see this process with cars, like one from Japan and another one from the United States. All this is a complete different thing, it is as if there is no end. I heard that even if you give things away to the big junk outside Sana’a, they take it away to renew it and sell it again. It is a big circle until things are really broken, they have to become dust or something like that and that is really interesting.
 

YO: -Are you inspired by any particular artistic movement in this type of work where you use waste or where you change the context of things?
TB: - I think there are a lot of artists or art history references to this kind of work. I am not the first one using old things or trash and trying to make art out of it, there is a long history already there… there are the nouveau realistes in France, Marcel Duchamp, there are already some movements in art history that worked in this line. At this moment art has grown so much in Germany that you cannot really tell if this is a movement or not. In the past ten years painting was very important but this is really about the art market, about business, especially in Europe or in the United States. Painting has been for the past ten years the most important thing, now maybe they are saying that sculpture is the most important thing, but this didn’t really happen so there isn’t such a movement at the moment. People try to make up movements so they can focus on something, but I don’t believe in this anymore. There are many artists, too many galleries, and in my case, I don’t’ belong to any particular movement.
 

YO: -Your pieces are not just sculptures; do they also try to provoke a social interaction?
TB: -Yes, over the last few years I created some pieces that remind the viewer of interiors where you can go to and remind you of your home, but in a confusing way because they are trashy. There are things you know but in a context that is different. I like the idea of using and moving interiors, move yourself inside it, work with things from everyday life, because everyone has a connection with them, everyone knows those things from using them. I like to have this sensibility on everyday life. Somehow it is something democratic as well, thinking, trying out, finding new meanings, getting a sensitive eye of what surrounds you.
 

YO: -The piece you are currently exhibiting in Sana’a is called “Cool Sana’a,” why this title?
TB: -It was a working title, I liked it myself because when I came here I had the impression that people were very kind and welcoming which contrasted to the image people have in Germany. In Germany people are, I don’t know how to say it because it is not that they are scared, but they put a special attention when they think about coming here, they aren’t really comfortable, they are unsure of what is happening here. I guess it is about the religion, the cultural difference not only with Yemen but with the region and with the near east as well. When you come here you do it with wrong preconceptions and when you meet people from here you see that things are completely different. For me, I am really happy about learning this because I take it with me and I will tell everyone about my experience. About the title, it was a combination of Sana’a being cool not in the sense of the temperature but in the sense of saying ‘there are cool people’ here, speaking in slang. That is why there are refrigerators, which are cold, cool. I also heard a lot of people call the piece “Burj al-Safia,” the tower of a neighborhood in Sana’a. I’ve been to that neighborhood several times and I think it is a good title because people see it that way so it is their association. I don’t have to make a decision about the title now, but people’s idea fits it very well.  


YO: -You want people to reappropriate your work in a way?
TB: -I work a lot in this way, big installations in which I start with one idea and then I have people helping me, then they get into it, they start to work on it, they have ideas, sometimes these are really good ideas, and sometimes it happens at the end that I am on the outside and they work on it. Somehow this is a social thing and I had really good experiences doing this so it is just not only my own thing, my head, because my head is quite small, and if you put more brains together more things come together.
 

YO: - Speaking of heads, you also have pieces in which you are there alone, self-portraits where your head is covered by different and unusual materials; then, there is only you?
 TB: -Yes, that is another thing, there is just me. There is a long tradition about the artist, self-portraits are a long tradition in art history, and when you are an artist you spend a lot of time alone, in your studio. It can be boring and you have to deal all the time with yourself… that is how I got the idea of working on these self-portraits where I worked with stuff I have in my studio. I have a quite big studio in Hamburg, and it is really packed with material and objects, so they get closer to me and want me. This idea is about subject and object, how barriers get lost when I take the things on me. Also, it is a way to hide myself; I don’t want to make a work about me as a person or as Thorsten Brinkmann, it is not about my individual being, it is about not being seen and this being more universal. In the seventies there was a big movement about self-performances in Germany and other countries as well, based on the personal being and I didn’t’ like the idea because I wanted this to be more universal, that’s how I came to this idea. It is about becoming an object somehow, it is a self-portrait but at the same time it is not because you cannot see me. Somebody said portraits are not human, but objects become human. That is a romantic idea of things becoming alive. I like the idea of people looking at it and projecting their own ideas on the pictures. It is a different way of looking at pictures.
 

YO: -Some of these portraits remind viewers of the work of Rene Magritte…
TB: - Yes, but it wasn’t in purpose. I didn’t decide that I should look like that. I play around with the ideas and I do it. I like Magritte but it was after doing these portraits that I discovered Magritte’s heads. Also Arcimboldo (Giusepe) with the portraits covered with fruits can be a reference, there are a lot of references…there are many references you can think of when you see these portraits. Even Don Quijote can be seen there.
 

YO: -What has Yemen changed in your work?
TB: -In my work, well, I can’t imagine to do a work on objects trying to make from four chairs one, or trying to make out of three objects one object… that is something I take with me from Yemen. I have also seen very interesting rooms or spaces and because I work on environments, especially since the past two years, I thought a lot about how to work on these Yemeni environments. Now I have a lot of new ideas that I am taking from here and reality is much better than the fantasy, you just have to open your eyes. I have to think about how to recombine things. There was an artist from Switzerland that also spent some time in Arab countries and he just brought spaces from here, in big installations. They were really impressive because the contrast was really big, that’s what I am thinking of: taking the entire place and don’t change it because it is completely different, the way of thinking, the sensibility, the function, how things work is very different.
 

YO: -Why Yemen?
TB: -It was really an adventure. I like how communication works here: somebody knows something, calls someone who knows someone else and all of the sudden you have ten people working there, a big group speaking Arabic, which I don’t understand a word of it. Most of the time I loved to watch and enjoyed where we were going, which were strange places…we found refrigerators in places close to the mountains, little hills with refrigerators pilled out, kids around… It was really an adventure. The best thing for me was that it all turned out very well and I have the feeling that I can go to any place and make projects work. I would also love to bring this piece to Germany to really have a cultural exchange, but I have to find out if it will be possible to show and move the piece there. Humor is really something without borders and I like that, I liked that from here. I would really like to come back to Yemen, I feel here things are like a mirror, if you smile it smiles back to you, if you don’t it doesn’t. 
 

YO: -What are your future projects?
TB: -There are many things going on: when I come back a week later I will be going to Japan. I have an exhibition happening now in Hamburg and it is part of a project of city partnership between Osaka and Hamburg, so the same exhibition goes to Japan and I build it up again over there. After that I have an exhibition in Berlin, in September I go to New York where I will be exhibiting my work at the International Center of Photography (ICP), in December I have an exhibition in Brussels…full agenda. The next months are going to be exiting. All these places will be a completely different story in comparison to Yemen. What I bring from Yemen is the value of surroundings, which are more valuable than in western countries, you are all the time thinking about reusing things, and so far this has been my impression. 

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