TIZIANA JILL BECK | Ostrakon Stories

Tiziana Jill Beck’s new series of works takes its starting point in an ancient democratic instrument: the ostrakon, the clay shard used in ancient Athens to vote on the exile of politicians. What sounds like a historical reference is, for Beck, a pressing metaphor for the present, in which democratic structures seem to be crumbling and trust in the community is being put to the test. The question that runs through her work is as simple as it is inescapable: What lies within a fragment? What story does it carry within it? In the exhibition space, Beck presents shards from the Rhine, whose exact origin remains unknown. Untreated and unaltered, they stand in the space as silent placeholders: for the idea that something small and broken once determined political destinies. Each work on paper is paired with one of these shards, creating an ongoing dialogue between object and image that runs through the entire exhibition.

In *Ostrakon Stories*, Tiziana Jill Beck sketches a portrait of humanity that does not dissolve into clarity. The question of existence is rarely a straight path, but rather a web of associations and contradictions, and the courage to remain confused is perhaps the most human quality of all. In Beck’s work, the fragment is not mended but exhibited. Because it is precisely in this that what connects us becomes visible. This order is as fragile as the shards from which it takes its name, and the question of its stability is more relevant today than ever before.

Tiziana Jill Beck (*1982) studied at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art and the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, where she graduated as a master student under Christoph Ruckhäberle. After extended stays in Paris and South Korea, Tiziana Jill Beck now lives and works in Berlin.