"tie, bond, relation" by Sophia Roggenkamp
Graduation Exhibition as Meisterschülerin (Master Student), 2025

"tie, bond, relation" 
by Sophia Roggenkamp
2025
Graduation Exhibition as Meisterschülerin (Master Student)

Soil, shaped by a heavy agricultural machine. As the tractor drove across the pasture, it left two uneven furrows at the distance of its wheelbase. Overnight, they filled with rainwater. The mud is piled so high that in some places it rises above the water’s surface. Only recently was this familiar image of a rutted muddy meadow complemented by the reflection of a fence with barbed wire applications.

For the exhibition tie, bond, relation, Sophia Roggenkamp approaches the place of her upbringing through different spatial scales: her parents’ farm, the nearest village, the rural landscape of Baden-Württemberg. The question of one’s own way of life simultaneously opens up a reflection on the relation between origin and future, on having left and the possibility of returning. Torn between a childhood in the countryside and a self-chosen life in the city, the works explore what home is and what it can be.

The publication is the starting point of this research-based work. It brings together transcripts of intergenerational interviews, personal childhood memories, and careful descriptions of place. The individual connection to a location inscribed in one’s very existence is illuminated from diverse perspectives by friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Indirectly, this traces the dimensions of an uncompromising stance between rural and urban living spaces.

Closely interwoven with personal development, the romanticized view of the rural environment is questioned by documentary black-and-white photographs. They testify to the fact that the place, colored by memory, is also subject to change: where once the forest edge bordered the farmland, today a newly built photovoltaic system stands, surrounded by surveillance towers and a fence lined with barbed wire.

Installative elements, whose materials reference farm life, invite visitors to pause and listen. Within hay and straw bales wrapped in a red load-securing net, selected conversations from the publication are concealed. They enable participation in the feelings of the interviewees and expand into larger questions of coexistence, as well as the demands of life in the countryside and in the city.

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www.sophiaroggenkamp.com