Exhibition ‚Tonschnitt’, Künstlerhaus Vienna, 2006
This ongoing project presents about 400 terracotta heads, figures of different nationalities and races placed on a ship, individuality – plurality. This installation, a ship with more than 4 meters of length was on a journey through Austria. Hartwig Bischof about the exhibition: “Margret Kohler-Heilingsetzer portraits human beings like boat people on a ship floating between a cut off origin and a future out of reach driven in no-manís-land of the wide sea. The artist built a ship for her small terracotta heads, on the one hand as the memory of the inadequate boats which refugees use for their escape, on the other hand because of the impression of size more than an anticipacion of the coming Arche Noah. All the different races and nations get together on this ship in form of portraits or ëcaracter headsí. These individual, expressive figures are composed of different coloured clay, producing an archaic impression. It seams they have been on this journey for a long time, but if you take a closer look you discover a big photo of those heads on the wall behind them. Who serves whom as a model, an oppressive question considering the increasing migration in the whole world.”