Vernissage: "Broken Soldiers" in Berlin

Wars belong in the museum. Or in a gallery... An exhibition will start in Berlin tomorrow, which addresses the vulnerability of the soldier. Not so much as a body, but psychologically (PTSD) and ethically. In her new series of works "Broken Soldiers", Deborah Sengl continues a long-standing theme of her work: the relationship between victim and perpetrator. Unlike in her series "Disguises", where each predator disguised itself as its prey, this relationship does not appear as a power play between individual protagonists, but as a tension within an individual.Sengl's portrayal of the soldier is fundamentally different from the glorification of the warrior/soldier as we find in European art up to the 20th century. However, it also differs from critical depictions of the soldier like those of Otto Dix and George Grosz, who mercilessly captured the inhumane horrors of the senseless massacres of the First World War. Sengl's focus is more on the traumatized and broken individual, the person desperate at their own actions, who is both perpetrator and victim.