After two forced migrations in two years, Herzlich Willkommen no longer sounds like a greeting, but like a cruel formula. This work emerged from an experience of “safety” in which promises of protection conceal humiliation, despair, and the cold mechanics of the system. Finding himself in Berlin after escaping prison, war, and the collapse of his own psyche, the artist encounters not care, but bureaucratic violence — slow, structural, and stripping away dignity.
Herzlich Willkommen is a trace of administrative hell: thousands of characters of correspondence, dozens of phone calls, months of pain and waiting, where basic medical care turns into an unattainable privilege. The work captures a moment of total vulnerability and surrender, when a person is forced to prove their right to a body, to health, to existence. Behind the polite phrase lies an experience of alienation; behind the façade of the welfare state — the silent violence of the system.
Print features the work “Herzlich Willkommen”
Artist: Gleb Kovalsky
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