Kristina Felzinger

My name is Kiki Felzinger, and I am a fine art student at the Berlin University of the Arts. My painting emerges from a struggle with identity – not as a promise of perfection, but as an invitation to endure what is already there: the ugly, the tragic, the tenacious. Over the course of months, I layer paint, strip back canvases and paint over traces until a resistance becomes palpable in the material. Within this structure, human-like figures, landscapes, unfamiliar vegetation and cactus-like formations emerge. One point anchors the real, the next eludes it. This deliberate friction between figuration and abstraction reflects a time in which society’s encounter with itself takes place under conditions of crisis: entanglement, invisibilisation, the loss of footing – alone and yet amongst people.

A formative experience is the contrast between Transnistria and East Germany: the echo of a pig’s squeal carrying across villages; harshness and voids seeping into the colours. From this balancing act, images emerge that open up an in-between space in which waiting becomes possible: pausing, not correcting. I am less interested in who we ‘want to be’ than in how we actually behave – often more instinctively, more animalistically, than our self-image allows. My works are not solutions, but touchstones for authenticity. They ask whether we should not first take three steps back in order to practise common ground and acceptance – before we move on.

Over the past few years, I have carried out a wide range of projects – from solo and group exhibitions to educational workshop formats – and gained initial experience of securing funding.

2025Group exhibition