»We have always searched for the future in the past«
Interview with Michaela Melián
Michaela Melián, Photo: Jörg Koopmann
Michaela Melián combines art, music and the culture of remembrance to create a multi-layered body of work. In her installations, drawings and sound works, she explores historical events, political structures and social issues. She has also been part of the band F.S.K. for over 40 years and releaeses solo music.
Annette and Rainer Stadler encountered Michaela Melián's art in 2014 in the exhibition Playtime at the Lenbachhaus in Munich. The group exhibition was dedicated to the theme of labour and showed artistic positions that dealt with the mechanisms of capitalism and social inequality. The two collectors were particularly fascinated by Melián's drawings. Their enthusiasm led them into dialogue with gallery owner Barbara Gross, who ultimately established contact with the artist and facilitated purchases for their collection.
In this interview, Michaela Melián talks about the beginning of her artistic career, the role of history in her work and the importance of music for her creative endeavours.
Is there a moment in your life that you would describe as the beginning of your artistic career?
The term "career" implies a certain level of regional or even national public recognition. In that sense, I would name my first solo exhibition, Tomboy (1995), at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, for which a catalog with the same title was also published. The works shown there remain relevant to me even today. Although I had exhibited frequently since finishing my studies, was the first time I was able to occupy really large spaces on my own, as the show in Baden-Baden extended across several rooms.
In the large main room on the first floor of the Kunsthalle, I painted eight large pink color fields directly onto the wall. On each of these monochrome surfaces, I hand-printed a different Tomboy phantom image thirteen times in red paint. These phantom images were portraits of eight women: Tamara Bunke, Emma Goldman, Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz, Erika Mann, Patsy Montana, Charlotte Moorman, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and Sir Galahad. Each of these portraits had been produced according to my description on the forensic computer of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Munich.
Since only male facial parts, generated from earlier, hand-drawn mugshots, were stored in this early digital drawing programme, these (female) portraits were composed from the existing (male) facial material. For this work, I was concerned with the following questions: How does language become an image? What pre-programmed stereotypes are embedded in both our language and the computer program itself? The selection of individuals for the descriptions was based on my search for female role models.
The 6.5 metre long sculpture Mossberg Model Bullpup made of pink terry cloth, produced in tenfold enlargement according to the original dimensions of the rapid-fire rifle of the same name, lay in the room as a seat.
In the adjacent room, 45 Tomboy drawings were displayed. With the Tomboy series, I examine the construction of femininity and gender roles. The drawings depict hairstyles, clothing items, and accessories that are generally associated with female connotations.
Installation view "Tomboy" Kunsthalle Baden Baden, 1995. Photos: Heiner Blum
In many of your works, historical events play a central role. Where does your interest in history, particularly in 20th-century German history, come from?
I was born and raised in Germany and shaped above all by the German language, culture, history, politics, media, and landscape – as well as by (West) German institutions such as schools and universities. No matter what topic occupies my mind, German history, with all its multilayered complexity, always comes into play. And these histories remain relevant to the present, much like Walter Benjamin describes in his philosophical concept of the dialectical image, where past and present enter into a constellation that suddenly illuminates their relationship.
How do you choose the themes and events you address in your works? What is particularly important to you in this process?
I have always been especially interested in how history paintings, for example, depict everyday life and politics. Who is describing a particular world, from what perspective, and for which audience? Who appears in these images, in what form, and who is excluded from the narrative?
From a deconstructive feminist perspective, this naturally leads to ever-evolving thematic complexities that resonate with the present and future. I usually don’t actively seek out themes – they find me or continue to develop organically. Often, they also emerge in response to the specific locations where exhibitions are planned.
You have created multimedia installations for many sites of remembrance, such as Memory Loops in Munich or your recent work Ulrichschuppen in Bremen. Can you tell us more about these projects and your approach?
The first work of this kind was my project Föhrenwald, which serves as an example for later works. There was no commissioning institution for this project, so it was only made possible through collaboration with Kunstraum München and Bayerischer Rundfunk, as well as financial support from the German Federal Cultural Foundation. After an extensive research phase, I was able to set up a temporary installation in Munich’s Hofgarten in 2005.
For four weeks, the 60-minute audio and slide installation Föhrenwald was presented in a specially designed structure, freely accessible to the public. Simultaneously, the soundtrack was broadcast as a radio play of the same name on Bayerischer Rundfunk. In addition, curator Heike Ander and I created a comprehensive publication documenting both the research and the artistic project, and we organized a symposium at Kunstraum München.
Föhrenwald, 2005, Installation view, Hofgarten/Galeriestraße Munich, Photos: Christoph Seeberger
Not far from where I live, I came across the history of the Föhrenwald settlement – history that, until then, was known only to historians and contemporary witnesses.
Föhrenwald was originally built as a model settlement for Nazi housing policy in the Isar Valley, south of Munich. In 1940, it was converted into a camp for foreign and German forced laborers working in nearby munitions factories. After the camp was liberated in May 1945, the American military administration repurposed the settlement as an extraterritorial camp for Jewish Displaced Persons. For more than ten years, up to 10,000 survivors of extermination and concentration camps, who were unable to return to their home countries, lived there.
Eventually, the self-administered DP camp was dissolved, and starting in 1956, German families – mostly large families of expellees – moved into the houses of Föhrenwald. The settlement was then renamed Waldram. Over all these years, however, the outward appearance of the settlement changed very little.
Today, years after my project, a memorial site has been established there, where my work Föhrenwald can now also be seen and heard. Föhrenwald tells the history of the settlement in the form of a multimedia installation: drawings of the houses, rendered in white lines on a black background, fade into one another, creating a visualized, imaginary walk through the settlement. Multiple voices narrate the different phases of its history. The script is based on documents from the buildings’ planning phase, the memories of forced laborers, interviews with Jewish residents, and testimonies from the German expellees who moved in after 1956 – some of whose families still live there today.
Professional actors voice the edited interview texts, while children read the historical documents. This polyphonic collage is interwoven with a musical composition, whose steady flow connects the different sources. For the composition, I used samples from records released between 1931 and 1938 by the Jewish record labels Semer and Lukraphon, in collaboration with the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Germany.
Föhrenwald, Dias, 2005
To explore your themes, you often create sewing machine drawings – for example, in the Tomboy series, from which several works are part of our collection. In this process, you transfer motifs onto paper using a sewing machine. How did you come to this technique, and what do you aim to achieve with it?
I see the sewing machine as a drawing machine because, by pulling, turning, and shifting the paper under the presser foot, the machine takes control of the drawing process. The lines gain a certain autonomy, a chaotic quality that escapes my direct authorship. In this way, the sewn drawing resists the idea of an artistic signature traditionally read as "genius." For me, this process is akin to écriture automatique - a form of automatic writing.
Additionally, unlike hand-stitching, the sewing machine creates a line through the interweaving of two threads – only by connecting the upper and lower threads does the line or drawing emerge. If one were to pull on a loose thread of the finished piece, the entire line would unravel, leaving only perforated paper behind.
For me, this form of drawing also represents a kind of digital notation, composed of ones/lines (the thread) and zeros (the holes). In this way, the sheet of drawing paper functions like a punch card, storing information through its perforations.
Image 1-6: Works from the series "Tomboy, 1995-2003" | Image 7: "G 3, 1991" | Image 8 "FNC, 1991"
Do you think artists have a responsibility toward society? To what extent should or must art be political?
I believe that no aspect of our lives is entirely outside the realm of politics. Art, too, exists within society and operates within political structures that influence what becomes visible, what makes a difference, and what remains unseen. There are remarkable examples of artworks that engage with socially relevant issues while being both discursive and deeply moving. However, I am skeptical about the idea that art can have a direct impact on political events – I wouldn’t impose that expectation on it by default.
Your work does not cater to the traditional art market. Has the market still influenced your artistic career?
The art market, with all its different facets, is an essential part of the art world, its discourses, and its dynamics. Many artists today work with ephemeral, media-based, or installation-based art and are present both at art fairs and in major exhibition venues. Naturally, the art market has influenced my practice as well, since sales have helped finance upcoming projects.
You have been playing in the band F.S.K. for over 40 years and are also active as a solo musician. What role does music play in your life and work?
Since I studied music before art, music has always played a central role for me. We founded the band F.S.K. in 1980 at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. It emerged from the underground magazine Mode & Verzweiflung, and the band remains active to this day. In 2023, we released our 17th album, Topsy Turvy.
At the time, we were not alone in our decision to express certain aesthetic ideas through music within a band. Many art students in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and Berlin also formed music groups in the early 1980s. With F.S.K., we have always searched for the future in the past by drawing on and referencing musical material from high and low culture to create something new. Deviations and chance occurrences mark the differences between our approach and an "authentic" reproduction. (>> disography of F.S.K.)
My art projects are usually interdisciplinary, meaning they consist of large bodies of work that can include drawings, photographs, videos, texts, objects, and, of course, music. Musically, I am primarily influenced by electronic club music from the past twenty years, as well as contemporary classical music.
A soundtrack in an exhibition space transforms both the room and the visitors' experience. The ephemeral nature of sound defines a space in time and invites us to linger. Sound flows around our bodies as we visually orient ourselves within the space. Additionally, music creates an intangible resonance for the drawings – because music tells stories, just in a different way.
Many of the tracks I have produced for my art projects also function as independent pieces of music outside their installation context. I have mostly released these works on vinyl and CDs outside the art world, rather than as so-called "artist records." It was important to me that these tracks were not only available in art institutions but also accessible to audiences from the electronic and pop music scenes. Some of my music tracks have reached a wider international audience as accessible, affordable products than the corresponding exhibition projects, which are naturally limited to specific art venues and their visitors.
Members of the band F.S.K. with Antony Shake Shakir from Detroit, Photo: Jenz Schwarz
You taught for many years as a professor of time-based media at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts. What insights and advice did you want to pass on to your students?
For me, an art academy is a space of possibilities where students can experiment freely, with as much time and support as they need. It is an incredible privilege to spend several years refining and negotiating artistic, conceptual, and aesthetic questions. But it’s not just about making the most of this time creatively and experimentally – it’s also about figuring out how one wants to live. So, if after this intense period of exploration a student decides to pursue art as a profession, I believe it is almost certainly the right choice.
The field of art is vast, and there are many paths where one can apply the knowledge gained in art school. It’s essential to show students the wide range of possibilities available to them as artists. More and more, the question arises: What role should artistic production play in society? And what needs to change in an art system where a select few become extremely wealthy while most struggle to make a living?
Ultimately, it’s about empowering students to create the life they want to live. There is no straight highway from point A to point B leading to an artistic career. The detours matter, and there are always countless options.
What are your plans for the future?
Keep going.