FORT

Ghosts

“I’ve got phantoms and ghosts waiting in line.” – Phantom Ghost

FORT was founded in 2008 by Alberta Niemann (b. Bremen, 1982; lives and works in Berlin) and Jenny Kropp (b. Frankfurt/Main, 1978; lives and works in Berlin). The focus of their creative practice is on everyday objects from private and public settings, which they rearrange, reconstruct, or defamiliarize, producing sculptures, installations, and photographs that walk the fine line between the familiar and the uncanny, solemnity and humor. The duo deftly plays with half-forgotten visual memories and visions of happiness, lending the works an emotional depth; the intimacy of domestic contentment is marred by trapdoors behind which deep-seated anxieties or the absurd loom.

Funded by the grant of the Hessische Kulturstiftung FORT collected vintage dollhouses and photographed the various empty rooms for the artists’ book Ghosts. Each house shows the hand of an individual owner and can be read as a portrayal of the erstwhile residents and their ideas on how to live. But the photographs also capture later alterations such as a child’s efforts to embellish or modernize the objects. Abandoned and desolate yet haunted by the ghosts of the childhoods of different generations and social classes, the dollhouses awaken to a peculiar second life.