HOPE

Hope

Winkhaus, with her new series "Hope," enters the forest as an artistic space—an Arcadia that has served as a projection surface for utopian or lost states since the time of Giorgione and Poussin. The large-format photographs, with their multilayered complexity, recall the painterly opulence of Rubens or the delicate symbolism of Arnold Böcklin. Her visual language evokes a sense of loss reminiscent of Proustian childhood memory: innocence as a paradise believed to be lost, yet at the same time a symbol of hope for the future.

Her works resemble tableaux vivants, in which children take center stage—clothed or naked, alone or in the company of adults. They are at times saints in the manner of Raphael's angels, at other times inhabitants of a dark world akin to that of Goya. The reactions provoked by Winkhaus' works echo the controversies surrounding Balthus or the nightmarish scenes of Hans Bellmer. The digital feedback loop of our time amplifies the ambiguity of these images: is it the viewer who feels compromised, or does the true provocation lie in the normative classification of what is seen?

In Winkhaus’ stagings, the cruelty of the world unfolds in a quiet manner—not as horror, but as an unwavering matter-of-factness. The forest becomes a stage, an open-air chapel where children, like angels with burning candles, protect their parents. Her family resembles a research expedition, reminiscent of the biblical flight into Egypt as well as the dark excursions of Romanticism, such as Caspar David Friedrich’s "Cemetery in the Snow."

Technically, Winkhaus moves between media: her digitally composed photographs are infused with painterly elements, while her directorial approach recalls the meticulous staging of Jeff Wall. With Hugo Schneider as her kindred set designer, she creates images that are more than mere snapshots—they are condensed narratives in which each figure holds a precise place within the complex composition of the image.

The presence of death is unmistakable: whether in the vague menace of the forest or in the figure of the girl carrying the dead bird, reminiscent of a modern Ophelia echoing Millais' iconic painting. But Winkhaus would not be herself if she had not long since staged resurrection as well: as early as 2006, she celebrated her own funeral as an art project—a theatricality that, in its consequence, recalls Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits or Cindy Sherman's conceptual transformations.

Her work is an odyssey between memory and projection, dream and wakefulness. In her images, we enter a world filled with melancholy and dark romanticism—a world that is both unsettling and familiar, much like the forest, where masterpieces stand and where scenes of life are continually observed and reshaped.

Text: Ophelie Abeler

When I was a child,

I talked like a child,

I thought like a child,

I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man,

I put childish ways behind me

Corinthians 13

 What changes when we grow up?