This year’s iBUG festival (Industrie-Brachen-Um-Gestaltung ~ Transformation of industrial ruins) took place from at an old factory in the city of Chemnitz. The history of the factory spans over a hundred years. In its halls specialized machinery for meat production was produced and grenades by slave laborers during WWII. As always the iBUG takes place in some town or city in the East German region of Saxony. Unfortunately, the right-wing party AFD (alternative for Germany) is very popular in this part of Germany .
That and the general election coming up next month which might see the AFD represented in parliament, was enough inspiration to paint the German version of my motive ‘Soulmates’.
The original version showed Trump and al-Baghdadi on a giant heart. Here, it was Frauke Petry (AFD) and Pierre Vogel (a well-known German Islamist). They are unified on a heart to emphasize on their similar ideologies. For a full description please have a look at the original piece here.
There is also a nice little video of the painting process here.
Apart from the main piece I took the opportunity to leave small stencils at various places onsite.
