Safe Room

By Kerstin Bennier

Digitial Media

Why ‘safe_room’? 

“safe_room…”

“Loving you

was the last thing

I felt really good at.”

Rudy Francisco, Helium

“safe_room…” refers to the current situation, the handling of COVID-19, in which we are currently living all over the world and which we have to learn to deal with in many different ways. Like all my works, it is a purely subjective view and expression.

Withdrawn from the outside world, physically cut off from friends and acquaintances, as an artist living alone, my studio in the big city no longer feels like the familiar safe haven. Walks through an empty and quiet, temporarily not living city slowly become a threat to the psyche. Physical Distancing and the associated impossibility to see people and colleagues, whom I appreciate in physical form, as we were used to up to now, is becoming an ever-greater challenge.

About the Artist

The artist Kerstin Bennier (°1976, Salzburg, Austria) is probably best described as working in the fields of conceptual art and, in the broadest sense, sculpture.

In her recent work, Bennier mostly uses textile materials – because of thematic affinities on the one hand, on the other hand she can draw on her experience as a costume and stage designer and use the almost endless possibilities of such materials. Basically, however, she does not allow herself to be confined to any particular material in her work, but always chooses it on the basis of criteria that each individual work imposes.