Ele Hermel 2016

Veronika Dobers and Rika Eto in galerie mitte, Bremen
In June 2016, galerie mitte presented a book project by the two artists Veronika Dobers and Rika Eto. Rika Eto lives in Nagoya, Japan and is a poet. Veronika Dobers has lived in Bremen for a long time and spent five years in Japan, where she worked as a visual artist and where she collaborated with Japanese artists and developed joint projects. During a work phase when Dobers explored physical phenomena in her reverse glass painting and in ink drawings as the basis for her pictorial narratives, a common working idea developed between her and Rika Eto. Each artist wanted to explore the appearance of the drops in their working method, Eto in words and Dobers in images. This resulted in the artist’s book „TROPFEN“, which was presented to the Bremen public accompanied by a reading by Eto and within an exhibition by Dobers. The reading was presented like a performance in Japanese and read by Martin Heckmann in German. The book „TROPFEN“ is read from back to front, as is customary in Japanese.

An encounter like this has an impact on the artistic work of those involved. In addition, it is also an encounter that transcends national borders, continent borders and cultural borders, if one may speak of borders here. A translation of a poetic text is not an interpreter’s job in the usual sense, but requires a high degree of empathy for the images formed by the language, especially in Japanese, where the short text, the poem, has a strong distinctive character that, in the context of Japanese culture, developed for a long time. „Tropfen“ was developed very carefully and in a long exchange process. In this way, everyone involved tried to do justice to the other language of culture.

Drawings : Veronika Dobers / Text : Rika Eto / Design: Hisaya Kojima
Translated into German by Veronika Dobers, with support from Natsu Sato
(Translation Japanese – English)
Advice : Masako Shishikura

Rika Eto lives in Nagoya, Japan.
She studied at Zokei University of Art and Design, Nagoya.
She works with poets and visual artists.

Veronika Dobers lives in Bremen, Germany.
She studied at Hochschule für Kunst und Design, Halle.
She showed her works in Germany, USA and Japan.
From 2006 to 2011 she stayed in Japan.