In his latest series of works, entitled 1.000 Odysseen, Winfried Muthesius (b. 1957) uses his photographs to explore the globally divisive topics of refugeeism and displacement. The artist, who lives and works in Berlin and Cape Verde, photographed items washed ashore on the remote beaches of the Cape Verde islands. These disturbingly poetic images for the most part show details of damaged or destroyed flip-flops — the simple footwear of people living in poverty. In the exhibition at the Stiftung Christliche Kunst Wittenberg, Muthesius enters into a dialogue with Oskar Kokoschka’s piece Rest on the Flight into Egypt, using this example to evoke humankind’s long history of flight and exile. This book features numerous images from the series, with hitherto unpublished drawings by the artist, images of works from his broken gold series, as well as texts by Pia Beckmann, Christhard-Georg Neubert, and an interview with Winfried Muthesius.


Text in English and German.