Paul Michels
Paul Michels was born in November 1999 and studied visual communications at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. Initially mostly interested in drawing to evoke emotions, he then started to learn to knit and to weave and combined that with self written poems and stories. Exploring the room with installations of hand-knitted and knotted sculptures and how they interact with words is the focus point of his artistic practice. Shifting between written stories and textile installations, writing got more and more important in his work. Recurring topics in his art are the relation to home, change over time and working with his memories. Contrasts as emptiness and warmth, searching and finding or inside and outside are found in several of his visual or written works. Looking into the opening gap between text and art, Paul tries to remember, to tell stories, to not forget and to create. Maybe even more, to hold; or maybe less, to let go. (Statement courtesy of the artist)
Paul brought some fabric and his sewing supplies to our apartment. He came in with an idea that he quickly drew on a piece of scrap paper, which ended up pinned onto our final piece. We all sewed strips of fabric onto a larger cloth, leaving the relics of our touch through each of our differing stitches.
Artist’s Instagram
1 2 3
Paul brought some fabric and his sewing supplies to our apartment. He came in with an idea that he quickly drew on a piece of scrap paper, which ended up pinned onto our final piece. We all sewed strips of fabric onto a larger cloth, leaving the relics of our touch through each of our differing stitches.
Artist’s Instagram
Maitreya: Can you start talking about your artistic journey? When did you first start making art? How did you get to this point now?
PM: It's always been part of my life. I feel like it's like that for almost every creative person. I've always done something. After school I wanted to do something creative. I wanted to do something with design. I didn't have any people in my surroundings that were doing something with art. I felt like doing something with design feels more like a good choice in a real job. I was so lucky to get in this Berlin Art School immediately after school. I started and then I figured out I really hate design. I'm really not interested in designing. I'm not a perfectionist at all. I feel like you need to be to some degree at least, most people are. I didn't feel like I wanted to do that. [During] COVID, I started to see what I'm interested in. I was working with fabric, working with threads and working in a room. Because I had so much time during COVID I just started to do something new. I liked it. It's kind of stuck with me now. Maybe that's a surprise. How was it for you?
MR: Similarly, I definitely have always been a creative person and art was always my favorite subject in school. I grew up in a suburban town. I didn't have anyone around me pursuing art. I got really into the idea of psychology because I was interested in people. I went to London for that. Then I realized, no, I don't want to be doing a science. I need to be creative. I'm doing Multimedia Journalism, which is still a job title. But I'm leaning so much more into creative stuff. If you have that instinct, it's going to trickle up. In some way or another. It will demand it.
Renée: I'm always making things. It started when my grandmother taught my sister and I how to sew. That was my first medium that I loved. Then I took a painting class at Skidmore. I just fell in love with that. I think it was fun to be working in a different medium. I've been doing textiles for so long. I think my goal for this year is to combine those two mediums and do more multi-media and installation work.
PM: That's nice. For me it was really interesting to leave a flat surface. Knitting isn't flat anymore because it's like bumps and bloops. I feel it's more interesting if it's leaving the wall and falling into the room. It's opening up the space.
RF: That's interesting. I was texting my sister today. She's six years older than me and also an artist. She said her current mantra is to “keep making art until it sets you free.” I really liked that. I've been feeling that, getting more emotional in my work.
PM: I feel like it's interesting what happens after you feel like you're set free. If you reach that point. Interesting.
MR: How do you know you're free?
PM: I feel like it's a task for your whole life. To get this idea to feel free.
MR: Do you feel like you can define your art practice?
PM: It's always connected to finding my own place. Leaving this place where I grew up. I've been in Berlin for five years. For me, it doesn't feel like home here. It feels so different from where I grew up. When I go back to my parents, it doesn't feel like home. I feel very comfortable there. I really like it, but it's not the same place anymore. I'm just thinking a lot about this. I'm always writing about this and doing my installations. I feel like there are so many different things that you can look at with the topic of home. For example, I feel like it's crazy to me that when you're not in the place anymore where you grew up and you're in a new place, time is going at the same speed. But if you don't go back to the place where you grew up so often anymore, when you go back it always hits you, that shop is closed, new cars and new houses and stuff like that. I feel like it's really interesting that time shifts everything equally. Through time, I feel like it's getting less and less of the place that you used to know. I feel like this was going through my mind a lot.
MR: I feel like that's so relatable. Not everyone, but most people go away for school. Your sense of home gets fractured and then because of that, neither can be fully...
PM: Have you seen this movie “After Sun?”
MR: No, but is it with the father…?
PM: Yeah, in the Delta in Turkey. I really recommend it. It's one of my favorite movies. This father left Scotland and his daughter is still living there with her mother. He's saying that once you leave home, you can never go back again. I feel like it really changed how I perceive this topic. Because even if you're going back to this place, you're still not back there because there was this break between. At least you would need some years to settle there again. It's not all on hold when you're gone, obviously. But I feel like it took me some time to realize it's not on hold. I feel like I'm in other places.
RF: I still have such a connection to home. I feel so comforted by being there, but I go back and feel like I'm just returning to my younger self. It's hard to feel like the me that I am now when I go back home. Because all my memories there were from when I was younger. Both of my siblings went away for school and then moved back to where we grew up. They said their perception of it now is totally different than when they were growing up because they had to make new routines and find new places to go. I haven't spent a lot of time there since college. It's like a few weeks here and there, but that's not enough to get grounded again.
MR: I have a very different experience because the school I transferred to is in my hometown because my dad works there, so I get free tuition. It's been interesting for me because it's a small, pretty conservative town. I really wanted to get out and move to a city. I went from being an angsty teenager, like, "Let me get out of here!" To really re-identifying with a place and building really deep, amazing friendships and figuring out what I want to do with my life so much more, within the boundaries of the town. But then at the same time, when I'm in college, it doesn't feel like I'm in the town I grew up in. I'm going to different places and with different people, I have different routines. And so then during breaks, I'm like, "Oh, it still feels like I'm going home.” I'm just going to my parents' house ten minutes away.
PM: When I go home, it's like nine and a half hours by train, so it's quite far.
MR: What was your hometown like?
PM: It's also very small. I grew up in a village of like two thousand people. So there was really nothing. There was just like one grocery shop. And then the next biggest city is like thirty thousand. And it's a really nice city. But then again, when I was growing up, I didn't spend any time there.
MR: So when you said that you make art inspired by home and leaving home how do you transfer those ideas into the physical?
PM: I was really inspired by Louise Bourgeois, I still am. She was working a lot about home and about family or gender roles, and I feel like that's also interesting. She [worked with] tea cloth and old bed linens. And it's so interesting if it's something that was so close to your body for quite some time. There's so much memory in that fabric, also when there's stains or small holes. I feel like then this is already home. It's so nice to sew poetry, what I've written, because I feel like words, when you read them on paper, it's almost just, like, words, because we see paper almost as something invisible. But if it's on fabric, the surface also influences the meaning of the word or how you perceive it. And I think that's really interesting, how the meaning of words can be changed, even if it's the same word, but just depending on the surface. And I feel like fabric really helps.
RF: Putting words and text in a different context. 'Cause it's always on paper, it’s normal. Giving more thought to its materiality is giving more importance to those words.
PM: Yeah, and I think it's getting it kind of out of this invisibility. I think using materials that connect to different rooms in a home, like bed sheets or towels from the kitchen or the bathroom. I feel like you immediately have the connection to a house in some kind of way. It's really interesting if you think about leaving places and leaving stuff behind. I've worked with bedsheets that my father had as a child, and it’s been more than 50 years since he was a child. I feel like somehow it's almost like a diary. It keeps being the same, but it just gets used. There are all the traces of time in it. And it has some kind of memory.
MR: Yeah, it's so interesting, time and memory are so associated with textiles. There’s the string of fate where everyone's connected with the red thread of destiny, and then there's the Norns. The Norns were these three women from Nordic Mythology who represented the past, present and future and they controlled destiny. And so when a baby is born, they cut the string of their life to choose when they die. Time is intrinsically connected to fabric and the act of weaving and that is represented across different cultures.
PM: I feel like it also really connects to writing as well, because text and textile both come from the same word. Writing is also, in a way, like weaving, and putting layers and layers and layers together. And then also, like weaving, if you only have a single word, it's completely different than if you look at the whole sentence or the whole paragraph. It comes together by weaving the words and putting them all together, and then it connects to a new image that's getting described by some sentences. If it's only a thread, then it's not a fabric, but if it's woven together, then it gets something that you can see or think about.
RF: I always think about how your clothing passes through so many different hands as it's being made. Thinking about everyone's hands touching this thing that then you wear, and it's touching you, and just that physical connection to so many people that you don't even know. But they had such a connection to this thing that you're wearing or interacting with on a daily basis.
PM: Yeah, that's really touching. It’s giving you a connection to so many other people. I also really like to think about what's holding you or yourself in a place or not. And I feel like this is a lot about holding and letting go also. Something that you work on and you're giving it away again.
MR: And clothes do physically hold you.
PM: Yeah and protect you and shield you to the outside… My grandfather is doing these studies about our family to find out where we come from generations before. I was talking to him about home and being there, and then he told me that in Europe in the 17th century, there was this 30-year-long war. I'm not sure if you know it, but it was all over Europe, especially middle and northern Europe, and it started because of this conflict between Catholics and Protestants. It was more than a whole generation, and because of this war, many people didn't have anything to eat anymore because they couldn't work on the fields. And it was also when the Black Death was in Europe, so there was a lot of death and moving and leaving, and at the time, my family was living in Austria for apparently a long time. There were, like, 11 siblings, and this one sibling wanted to go to the United States in like 1620. He walked by foot and wanted to go to France, to the sea, and then on the way, he got sick and broke his leg, and then went to a monastery. He could heal there and start to read and write, and then he stayed there, and this is so crazy, because, like, 350 years after, I was still born in the same village that he arrived in 350 years ago. I just heard about this half a year ago, and then it really made me think, because I've been working on finding my own place, leaving home, and where I belong, and then I figured, somehow, that it made kind of sense, because knowing this branch of this family tree didn’t leave this place for 350 years, and now I'm the first one. I think about this all the time. This man left with a dream to go to this new continent, and then never did go, and I thought about how it must have been for him, that he had these big ambitions, and no one followed his dreams. I was just thinking about this in my bachelor's project, doing an installation. I was tracing my body outlines, knitting them several times, then putting them together, filling them with straw, and making puppets out of them, and laying them out on a very small mound. I feel like almost every artist at one point in their life or another starts to work with their own body. I was really interested in that, the last two years, to just see my body. I feel like it's some kind of anchoring in a space, because it's holding the shape of me that it was at that moment, and almost taking a photograph or something. You're capturing this moment… I feel like it can add so much pressure to not be in the same place anymore and start new somewhere where you don't know anyone. It must have been so different back then when leaving also meant leaving people behind and not being able to keep in touch. I feel like there's a lot of sorrow in homes, because it's a very static place, and it's not moving. Somehow I felt like it's a feeling very close to being homesick, but different. I feel like just writing about sorrow also brought me closer to this feeling of what makes a home a home.
MR: I definitely get a feeling of sadness when I go back home for a time, that feeling of stagnancy feels kind of sad. My parents are starting to transition to New York City, and so they have a small apartment there, and our house back in Saratoga. Our house in Saratoga definitely brings up feelings of stagnancy, because I feel like when I got older, I could recognize my parents didn't really like living there, and so there's also this...sadness that your parents are staying in a place that they don't necessarily want to be in, but it's good for raising kids. I don't know if that's relatable to everybody's experience.
PM: I can relate to this feeling of realizing that your parents also have wishes and dreams. You don't know this as a child, that they are not only there for you. At one time, you start to realize that they also want to achieve stuff and I feel like that's touching.
MR: I wanted to ask, in your piece "Memories of Home after Leaving" I perceive it as a dragon. But Renée didn't, and I'm curious if that was intentional.
PM: No, it wasn't. Another person also told me they saw a horse. That's what I didn't like in the end, because I really wanted that no one could see anything, and I'm not sure if that's even possible. I wanted to make it abstract.
RF: It's such a human thing to see something abstract, and try to understand.
MR: How do you think your art practice is going to shift when you're transitioning to writing [in your graduate studies]?
PM: Yeah, I was also thinking about that. If it's going to change, maybe not that much. Because [in my admissions interview] they asked me why I want to do a second bachelor and how it is for me coming from an art school and then wanting to study something that's not visual. And I feel like it was almost stupid to me because I feel writing is also so creative. It's also about capturing how you see the world in your own way and showing it to others or making it accessible for others. I feel like words are just condensed
RF: Yeah, I think so too. So yeah, you have two parts to your practice, the writing and the visual. When people are looking at your work, do you want them to know the story of it and your story and do you want the visual and the written to be equally important to the whole idea of it?
PM: I'm always unsure if people really need to see what I've written because ideally I think both would work individually. Because then I feel like it succeeded in being able to tell you the story in its own medium. But yes, I don't think it has to be on its own to work, hopefully.
MR: How much of yourself do you want to be conveyed through your art?
PM: I think it's really hard to say because I don't think it's even possible for me to work and not put myself in between. But maybe it's also because I'm working with thoughts that I'm constantly thinking and trying to capture it. I can't really write a diary because this always makes me cringe. I write stories from different people, how they perceive the world, and then it's so much easier for me to just say another name and then write down what I am thinking. I feel like it kind of builds a distance even though I know I'm lying to myself. And I feel like that's also what fiction is about, to just pick what you want to bring across. I always feel so close to what I'm working on because I've been thinking about it so much. So I'm happy if people can see that there's parts of me in there. I want to convey something so it's not just looking visually pleasant, which is also completely fine. But it's more philosophical, thinking about, when is something more like decor and when is something art? I'm not sure, maybe it's also to convince yourself that you make something important for the world, that you want it to be perceived as art and not just as something beautiful. But ideally people can see that there's thought behind it. But then again, I think you also need to accept at a point that not everyone will like what you're doing. And you don't feel crushed when people don't like it. I feel like that's not so easy for me to accept, and to be confident enough to say I like it this way and it's going to stay this way. And I feel like that's also so interesting, to know when an art piece is finished.
RF: I feel like every professor I've had has been like, your work is never finished. It might be finished for now, but maybe in like three days or like six months or five years, you'll return to it and keep working.
PM: I think that's also good that you're like, this process never stops. Because you're always improving and there's always more you can build upon.
MR: I feel like I hear more and more the question: what are your themes? What is your art about? And what I struggle with is how I feel like artists are expected to have a go to theme that they always return to. And that's what's written in statements or how you present yourself in a business way. And I have no idea what I would say. I feel like I like the constant change and shifting ideas. It's like, do people really just stick to one idea? Is everyone faking it to sell themselves as one brand?
PM: I think it’s trying to get outside validation that you're not just a creative person, but you're an artist. People do this to bring across that they are really doing important stuff or adding importance. Because I was a design major, I had one professor always saying, “You're a designer, you're not artists.” To me and to many others it was actually almost feeling offensive because, like, when can you say that you're an artist? It was rude because she was telling us how we get perceived. But then for me, it was also adding to this kind of shame, because I felt kind of shameful to say I am an artist because it feels like you're taking yourself very seriously. I don't want people to think that I think I'm so important. But I am an artist, we all are, otherwise we wouldn't sit here. And I think that's also part of the reason why you say “I'm working with this topic” because then it almost gets a scientific factor in it. I'm researching. I'm fully throwing myself into this, it's to make it not look shallow.
MR: Yeah, it's funny. I feel like when we talk to people our age, it always comes back to that, it's hard to call ourselves artists.
RF: Because we're just students and we're still figuring it out.
PM: I also don't say I'm an artist. There was this Europe-wide open call and they were looking for young artists and I applied and they picked me, and then they were writing us emails and it was like, “the artists.” Really referring to me as an artist and also inviting me because of my art and giving me money because of my art and from then on it kind of changed. It's stupid that it made me change, but I feel like it was validation other people gave me for it.
RF: I think it feels like such a self-centered thing to say, like, “Oh I'm an artist,” because it is so subjective.
MR: Artist is the same kind of title as waiter, actor, manager. And I think at least in our language artist feels like a career title.
PM: I can imagine an actor kind of feels the same. If you get a play somewhere then you feel more like an actor than just studying it.
MR: You said that you like theater. What about it are you interested in?
PM: So many things. I'm really into costumes and costume design. I feel like I can really enjoy movies even if the plot is not good or not my genre. I also like reading scenic texts or texts that are like plays that are written in this kind of way because I feel like it's giving you instructions on what you should think. But then again it's also giving you more empty space to imagine. I had a project where we all had to pick a queer person from Germany who was in exile at one point in their life, and then draw something about them. I felt like it was so interesting but also weird because there's so much pressure to portray them in a way that they would like. I picked an author who was probably bi-sexual. He had a school friend and they were almost like a couple, but he also had to marry and he married a woman, but he also was very in love with her. His school friend ended up marrying the sister of the woman he married. It was during the period of the first and the second World War and there was so much violence around, they fled to exile to Denmark and to the island Bornholm. They were almost living in a microcosm there. It was really touching that they were living in a place filled with as much love a as possible. I decided to write a fictional scenic text about this love cosmos there.
MR: Do you feel like you can consider yourself in collaboration with him?
PM: No I don't think so actually because in my definition of collaboration, both people need to work on the project and I feel like he definitely inspired me a lot, and if it wasn't for him I would have never done this work. I would definitely say that he was a huge influence and without him it wasn't possible. But I think for my definition it wouldn't be a collaboration. But it's not because I don't want to give him the credit for the work, but just from the definition. I can't imagine working [during the first and second World Wars] as an artist and not being influenced in a way from society and having to make work in response to that. Is it possible to make art without it being political? I honestly can't really answer it for myself, like, I'm definitely not doing enough with my art. I feel like it's really about being brave.
MR: Yeah, there's so many different ways to be political. Do you feel like you've ever had any big revelations through doing art?
PM: It was really emotional when I was rebuilding my own head. I had it on my lap and then I was just sewing fabric around it and it was in a position where the mouth is opened and it's kind of in pain because it was fitting to the story. It was about pain and being able to be on my own to make decisions, and always wanting to get feedback in a way. And the text was about dependencies in relationships, but not only love relationships, but in all kinds of human relationships, and how there's oftentimes dependency between people, and how that brings pain because you can feel like you need someone else for different things. Then I was working on the legs, and there were wires sticking out, and then this head, and it's the facial expression of pain. I was working so many hours on this head and I was having it in my lap. I kept stitching into it and during the days I was working on it, it really felt like I was hurting myself in a way, because I kept pushing the needle in. It felt like I was healing myself and caressing myself and trying to understand myself, trying to put it together and healing the surface of the outer layer. I don't think there was a big realization in the end, but I was definitely thinking about what's important for me, or what's going on inside of me. But without being at the end, knowing “Okay, now I figured it out.” Also the process of just taking the time and sewing–I feel like it's so meditative, it comes easy when you don't need to think about what you're doing with your hands.
MR: Yeah, that's such an interesting process to rebuild yourself. Of course it's gonna make you reflect.
PM: It sounds a bit strange to hold a third arm in your arms or like another head. It's definitely not how I look because it's just fabric, and of course the proportions are not right and it's more abstract. But I know I modeled it from my own head and it feels to me like my own head. Louise Bourgeois was a big influence because she also did these heads and they really captivated me on how they express their emotions.
RF: Are there any writers that you take inspiration from?
PM: I feel like German is such a great language to play with because you can make any word up and make it bigger and bigger and bigger and it produces an image in your head and you don't need to know the word because you know the compartments of the word. There's a really nice writer, Isabel Waidner, who was born in Germany, but lives in London now and only published in English. I can't imagine feeling so confident in another language that you choose to only write in this language. Their first book got retranslated into German. I've read that and it was really interesting and also really inspiring because they also use art as inspiration. They were writing about Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the medieval paintings. They're super crazy, flying frogs and animals and fairies and everything. It's about a court case and all of the people in the painting are the lawyers and all of that and it's inspired by his painting. The English title is Sterling Karat Gold. It won a German prize because it was translated so innovatively because the characters in the book were almost all non-binary and in German it's not easy. The author is also non-binary. I felt like it was connected because the language wasn't giving them room.
MR: So how did the translator translate non-binary pronouns?
PM: “Polish gendering.” With German words you oftentimes end with “i” to make the female version out of it, and they would turn it around to mix it up in new words. With the pronouns it was also like the letters for the male and female version, but it was always switched around so it created a new word. It's crazy because it's also really influencing what you create in your head, because then there were these people in the book that were fighting bulls and normally in the German plural version it’s always the male one, you would think about male bullfighters, but the letters were switched around so it didn't say only male bullfighters and suddenly it didn't matter anymore. It was more about bullfighters and not male bullfighters. It also changed in my head the images of the bullfighters that were there.
RF: Have those new words that the translator created started to be more widely used in German?
PM: No, it was just translated like last month. But it's more to get awareness, maybe. There are some people who want to do it, but there's also people who definitely don't want to do it. For example in Bavaria in Germany they made a law that [gender-sensitive language] is forbidden. It was half a year ago, because it's a very conservative state. If a teacher in school is [using gender-sensitive language] then they can get lawsuits and problems and now it's forbidden in official buildings which is so crazy. It's a really big topic in our society, to find words for every person, but you first need to see the need for that.
MR: I didn't know that about Bavaria.
PM: Another artist that I really like is Tracey Emin. She was also working with fabrics, words and also very political stuff. She got money from a gallery to put up an installation and she was going through a breakup at the time, apparently it was an on-off relationship. It was destroying her because it takes up so much energy. She was so depressed and she couldn't leave bed for days, so she built her own bed in this gallery and put the bed in there with the messy bed sheets and with the cum stains and blood stains and condoms on it.
MR: That's such a personal project, like you're committed to vulnerability.
PM: It is actually from the 90s which is even bigger because it's never done before. Almost also very performative because she slept in it. Do you have different stuff that you want to try out in the future?
RF: The past few months I started painting on tracing paper so you can see through it. That's been really fun and I want to experiment more with that but more so the installation of those paintings because I just hung it against a white wall. So it was just white behind it, but I want to think about the installation of that and what you see behind it and even putting it outside or making an installation that involves transparency.
PM: It's so nice to think about the importance of what is seen and what is not seen. Oftentimes I end up working monochromatically because I feel like it's nice that it doesn't jump in your face. I feel like then it helps to think about the colors that you use and how much is seen in the end.
MR: Is there anything that you are wanting to experiment with?
PM: When I was building [my thesis] installation I was piling up 32 kilograms of straw. It looked so nice I really felt like it could be very nice and also kind of a performative art form to just dump straw in places and make big piles out of it because it's to me, so full and so empty at the same time. It's so fitting because it's having this warmth of a home but it's also kind of full of sorrow in a way because it's just empty and there's nothing in it and you almost get no energy out of it. It's having these very big contrasts in itself. I like that. So I want to do something with that, and also straw could connect into the land. Many artists have done that before. [There was an artist] I read about and last century she brought a lot of straw into museums and just dumped it there and it looked so beautiful in Brutalist architecture. Straw is also very political and in France, very close to where I grew up, there are always many protests, especially from farmers. We wanted to go grocery shopping [in France] and we went into this parking lot and there was like one meter covered all with straw and cow feces because the farmers wouldn't get enough money for their produce. And they would just dump all of the stuff there. And I feel like that's interesting because it looks kind of like art, it's very performative.
MR: And then what's the line, if they're not considering it art, can we?
- Our collaboration
- Close up of our collaboration
- verortung im raum [localization in space], 2022 (photo courtesy of artist)
- Border artwork gedanken an heimat nach dem verlassen [memories of home after leaving], 2023 left: wool, steel, nails, right: digital drawing
- Sterling Karat Gold: A Novel by Isabel Waidner [book]
- Tracey Emin [artist]
- After Sun by Charlotte Wells [film]