As long as we can open the window - Getting some fresh air these days, getting a new dimension.

Digital Collage
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle William Turner Paper
50x65cm
Limited Edition of 10

As long as we can open the window

Celebrate the beauty of worn clothing..
Studies show that newly purchased clothing is only worn 7 times on average and then thrown away. Nowadays we often wear a t-shirt just for one season. 
For this series about sustainable fashion, I dived into my closet, making several collages with my own wardrobe and it made me think: Isn't it the most sustainable way to be creative with what you already have? What stories does each garment in my closet tell me? Why do I feel like I have to buy something new in order to feel good and beautiful?
In my work as a costume designer, I learned to rarely buy new clothes for the actors, but use costumes with traces of use, or even specially process the clothing so that they have a patina and tell the story of the person.


Give clothes a second life Nr2 – From series about sustainable fashion

2020, Amsterdam
Digital Collage 
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle German etching paper (310g)
50x65cm / Unique Piece

For this work I cut the fashion labels out of my clothes and photographed them. Then I processed these photos on the iPad with my digital collage technique. I wanted to find out whether the labels are important to me and whether clothes lose value when the brand is no longer visible? 

Personalize my Dress - From Series Sustainable Fashion

We are water creatures. Primordial soup, amniotic fluid - all life begins in this element. It is therefore not surprising that water and femininity are so close interwoven in art and literature. Loreley, siren, water nymph, mermaid - the woman with the fish tail has a special fascination for the male sex. It is seduction and doom, ecstasy and destruction. She drags sailors and ships down with her into the depths of the ocean.

Looking at the woman with the fish tail we remain in a sphere of uncertainty: Does she gently slide the baby into the bathtub, does she rock and hold it - or is she about to let it go?

Mermaid Mother

This collage addresses the/my feelings about breastfeeding.
The fascination about the miracle that breast milk is the source of life and that children get all the nutrients through it for the first few months, but for what price?
The ambivalence of feeling like being in a cocoon, feeling comfort and floating on a cloud and on the other hand the feeling of being squeezed out, to see that your own body is changing, to be trapped and to notice that your own body is there for another living being.

Digital Collage
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle William Turner Paper
30x40cm
Limited Edition of 25

Breastfeeding

“Two souls alas are dwelling in my breast” - We experienced the tragic dilemma of Goethe's Faust in a special way this summer 2020. The one soul in us longs for vitality, freedom, joie de vivre and light-heartedness. The other soul, the conscience, loses itself in thought and worry.
Right now, through Corona, these two souls are taking centre stage. Longing, memories, and reality overlap in the image - just like in yourself.
How do I want to remember the Corona period? Have I put my individual welfare before the one of others? A constant trade-off between security and the urge for vitality. If the outer pillars of life collapse, it is particularly the inner strength that counts. 
The forward striving soul, longing for freedom, literally runs against the wall - behind it hides a black, uncertain future. We are experiencing a bizarre and surreal time and do not know what lies behind the scenes. 
Like on stage waiting for the performance to start, we experience life behind the curtain: Man is locking himself up right now. But there is hope: What kind of new creative energy, thoughts and changes arise in the isolation, behind the curtain?


Summer 2020

In the bed sheet series I deal with the topic of dressing up in white sheets, inspired by childhood memories when we made clothes out of my mother's blankets.

Digital Collage
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle William Turner Paper


Bettlaken 1

The watercolor series is based on a photostory I made with my sister. 
I have been experimenting with watercolor elements for these digital collages. 

Limited Editions of 10, printed on Hahnemühle watercolor paper, 50x65cm

Sisters

The inner attitude...is a collage project about the topic: Is the glass half empty or half full?
Change perspectives and stay positive. Through what kind of glasses do we see the world?


Inner Attitude

"Let´s meet for a coffee in a cafe". .. for me the symbol for a lighthearted life and unthinkable in these times. Right now I feel weightlessly drifting through the weeks without a sense of what day of the week it is. Completely in the here and now and with no plans for the future.

Floating through the days

The empty stage - what is left?

The theatre is for me a symbol for the experience of the here and now. An artistic moment which forces the present of actors and audience “taking the time” to interact and to be together in one room – here, now. A phenomenon that is unfortunately unimaginable these days. 


Empty Stage - No Theatre during Corona

For the first time in my life the issue of borders affects me. I feel not lonely during Corona, because my children and husband are with me, but our parents and families are in Germany and it breaks our hearts that we can not just  go and see them. The collage is a composition cut outs in the shape of the Dutch border.

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Johanna von Oldershausen

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