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Your work moves between painting, performance, installation and new media. How would you describe your artistic practice?

Nancy: I’m obsessed with crafts. There is a German phrase about letting crafts grow over things, and I take that quite literally. I’m Nancy, an interdisciplinary artist. I mostly work with performance, new media and installation, but I’m also a painter. My paintings are very loud and colourful. They often revolve around landscapes, empty landscapes, abandoned spaces, thresholds and gaps that have been left behind. I cover these grey or empty areas with a slightly disturbed layer of colour. I’m also a performer, and I often use my paintings as a stage or set design. I step into my paintings as a performer, and the memories that emerge from these settings usually lead to movement or sometimes to a digital image.

There is a strong sense of transformation in your work. Where does that come from?

N: I’m interested in growing grass inside objects. Recently, I’ve been working mostly with objects and glasses from the former GDR because they carry very strong memories for me. There is something powerful about watching something grow. I cannot make it grow, but I can give it company. I can give it water, watch it and wait. And sometimes it doesn’t grow. For me, it’s about the transformation itself, watching a material transform. That transformation becomes a tool for me, but also a task, or an object in itself.

You also describe the objects and spaces you work with as thresholds. What interests you about that idea?

N: The object is a threshold. That’s something I’m very interested in. The space I’m working with was also a place for watching people and controlling people. Now it has lost that function. In this project, somebody has brought something here. These are objects and materials that come from another time and another place. They have a little stop in between, a moment in this threshold. I’m very interested in inviting people to come in and stay, because normally you don’t stay here. Normally, people are not inside.

That idea of invitation seems important to the project.

N: Yes. I decided to be here for a couple of days while the exhibition is running, to open the doors. It’s an invitation for people to come and have a look, to come inside, maybe to sit with me for a while, have a tea or have a conversation. I don’t want the space to simply be something people look at from a distance. I want it to become a place where something can happen.

You also make the space deliberately difficult to see. Why?

N: When I’m not here, as you can see, I made the space a bit blurry. It’s not really visible. I would like people to come a little closer. I make it slightly challenging to see something, so they have to approach it. They have to look more carefully. And perhaps that’s also part of the work: creating a reason to come closer.