lehenleiten

Drawing is used by Moussa Kone as a medium of reportage, in the sense of a drawing that brings something back.¹ The artist followed his late grandfather’s tracks: In 1945, the fifteen-year-old boy escaped his duty to join the Nazi troups. Together with two friends he jumped off the train that was heading to the front line with the Russian army. They hid for several weeks in a forestal area not far from their hometown and waited for WWII to end.

Kone reconstructed from private recordings the path of his grandfather, from the point where he jumped off the train to his hiding place in the mountainous regions. In summer 2013 the artist walked along this route and made these twenty-one postcard-sized drawings. They show landscapes, details of nature and moments where he focused on his own position. The images illustrate a route of the past, linked to the artists's present.

“A series of small drawings documents the impressions I collected along the way. Every step caused speculations on what happened then, and how over generations we are connected through space and time. Many of my late grandfather’s friends, who did not jump off the train, never came back from the war. My life today is connected to his courage back then - and this is just one example of many.” (Kone)

It is an intimate writing down of oral history. An untold, private story, that finally reaches the public space of a museum. Like collected fragments, the drawings were summed up in a precious box to form a memento mori. The title of the series refers to an area near a small village, where the artist’s grandfather jumped of the train: Lehenleiten.

The series was developed for Keep your Feelings in Memory, curated by Agence Borderline. The show presented a selection of contemporary art works in dialogue with the particular architecture of the Musée national de la Résistance in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, and its permanent collection. The artists offered reflections about art, resistance, and memory in a space dedicated to remembrance. The aim of the exhibition was to rekindle and dynamise a trans-generational dialogue through a nuanced reflection on these themes in both a broad and in a contemporary sense. By proposing diverse layers of meaning, Agence Borderline attempts to raise questions about times of resistance and resistance to time. The series was awarded a prize at the Austrian Graphic Art Competition.

¹ compare Berg, Groos, Krümmel, et al. (ed.): Diving trips. Drawing as reportage. (Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf, 2004)