"KAK.TUS" Introducing the theory of self-empowerment and resilience

We are back in the year 2022 where I created my second solo exhibition with the title "KAK.TUS"

Why Kak.tus? Because you can’t touch it’s skin. That’s what I needed to embody back then. As hard as someone tries to dash my dreams and wishes, I would not let them.

The fullstop point in the title is attentionally because it creates a word game in german KAK for “shit” and TUS for “doing”, which can be read to:

“Even when it feels shit, do it anyway”.

This is the follow-up of the first exhibition where I discussed the fact of being trapped in your own thoughts and realising that this is not the reality. Read more about it here.

I realised that when I wanted to put myself and my ideas out there, i needed some form of protection. Otherwise the people of the outer world had too much power over me and interfered with my plans. I expressed ideas too hard to take for the surrounding I was in. Things I would hear were:

“you better not try.”

“it won’t work.”

“it never worked so it won’t for you.”

and the list goes on. Unfortunately I believed these people as often I had a very close relationship with them.

Then a point was reached where I felt trapped. Especially when I’ve started to realise that there are many other people living the ideas, that I was only dreaming about.

“Why them and not me?!”, I asked myself and was desperately crying, felt very lost and defined my others.

In about the same time, I realized that the cactus plant I had in my room died. This plant, once stable and green, now showed its mushy substance and was almost falling out of the pot. I had never considered that a cactus is actually so soft inside, while its outer layer seems untouchable and defensive with every approach.

There was my cactus moment, as I saw myself like the inside of the plant, soft and formable. I wanted to protect myself from external influences, just like the cactus does. I wanted to allow myself to be soft, yet untouchable. This is where I’ve drawn many cactus, made it the topic of my exhibition.

I’ve developed the stable oval form, which is abstracted from the cactus shape and now means protection yet stability to me. The center, the inner cactus, that helps you guide through this world even when the noise of the “idea killers” is louder than yours, you will know, that their experience is not yours and that their limits are not supposed to be yours.

You are limitless when you guide life with your authority. This is self-empowerment and resilience.

This is a series where I recap the last 4 years of solo exhibition in the next 4 weeks as anticipation for this year’s exhibition, happening 12th september 2025 in BORDEAUX!

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