i ain’t from no east coast

‍2024‍

Germany

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When you are often asked where you come from, 

it makes you think more about it. 

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I would say I'm at the end of two cultures.

Not in a negative way.

But in the neutral. 

Looking at something new, something uncertain.

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I am the daughter of a couple who met in a bar in Saxony, Germany. My mother, a single mother and a worker at the Publicly Owned Enterprise company (VEB) of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), my father, an ex-soldier and contract worker from Angola. They found their love between the Cold War and civil war, between socialism and racism, between dreams and empty promises by the government, between the textile and the motor vehicle factories of VEB. Shortly after they met, the Berlin Wall fell and with it the ethical and economic planned economy, as well as the contracts about his right of residence. Then I was born and shortly afterwards they decided to continue working on the dream of a better life. We moved to the former West. 

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I guess that was the start of being cultureless. 

‍i ain't from no east coast (working title) is an exploration between documentation and staged photography. Borders are crossed in order to form an answer to the question of belonging and self-definition through narratives of a new personality that carries different cultures within it. It is a journey in whose core socialism plays a formative role and whose path leads between stereotypes, prejudices, affiliations and novelty to the definition of an own gap- and mystery-laden, Afro-European being. It is a story about inner conflicts, decisions, loss and opportunities in a changing society.