Planetarische Bauern

Heavy protective netting covers bales of straw stacked beneath a grey sky. Winter on the farm appears colourless and bleak – an atmosphere that Luisa Keintzel (born 1996 in Berlin), a graduate of Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, captures in her photographs and accompanying texts. Her project Covered links agricultural conditions to the story of Persephone from Greek mythology. The daughter of Demeter and Zeus, Persephone was abducted by Hades and taken to the underworld. Her mother secured a pact permitting Persephone to return cyclically to the surface of the earth; she now only had to remain in the dark underworld for a quarter of the year. This was how the barrenness of winter was explained. In contrast, Persephone’s return to the world symbolized spring and the renewal of nature. In fictional letters, Keintzel reanimates the mother–daughter relationship from a feminist perspective. Would we be living in an everlasting paradise if Persephone had never been captured?