Boatpeople – freedom and borders’ was the 12th boat installation by Margret Kohler Heilingsetzer since 2006. New was a three-meter-long construction by Christian Liener, who built the first ship in 2006, this time abstracted and walkable – with about 200 terracotta heads and collaged with newspaper headlines from 2002 to 2019.

The topic of this project saw the artist as an essential contributor during the Wiener Festwochen 2019. The refugee and asylum debate of the previous two years, as well in Austria, was negative and inhuman and increased the fear of a new racism among many critical Austrians.

The Situation 2019: A global shift to the right and undemocratic developments in society concerns many. Rescue ships of aid organizations and NGOs prevented from saving lives. Italy closes its ports under the approval of the Austrian Government. We applaud the mayors of Palermo and Catania who have welcomed refugees! An aim of the Austrian government was to return refugees, specifically to Libya, where detention camps are unsustainable and gross human rights violations prevail.

As a reminder, 80 years ago people were driven out of Europe and the flight across the sea took place from Europe- look at collaged journal AUFBAU from 1941.

Parallel to the series ‘Boatpeople’ the graphics series ‘departure-arrival’  was created from 2017 on and characterises the developments within European and global integration (such as Mexico-USA). The big offsetprint ”dream of a better life”,2016, first shown in Vienna.