The two pictures by Barbara Yelin, displayed on the billboard, are based on her comic “Es passiert” (“It happens”) which gained high attention and was published in the German daily newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on 4 October 2018. In total 23 single pictures tell the story of a woman and her child spending a beautiful day at the bathing lake while the very same moment people are struggling to survive in the stormy Mediterranean Sea.
Barbara Yelin shows that there definitely is a relation between those affluent people reading newspapers at the beach and the refugee rescue ships which are denied access to the European ports. The artist specially created two new drawings to be displayed at the Kunst-Insel which summarize the comic’s message. She explains: “In general, I like to draw in an open, ‘unfinished’ style which always gives room for further thinking. The father’s situation on the one side of the billboard and the mother’s situation on the other side could not be more different and yet, the two of them are inseparably related by their being human. I think it is important that we, who are living here, are aware of the fact that we are privileged. And that we think of a way to help people in need.”
Barbara Yelin, born in 1977 in Munich, lives and works in Munich.
