Fat to Ashes combines three storylines: a religious festival in honor of St. Agatha, the slaughter of a pig, and the Carnival of Cologne.

The spectacle centers on the film inside an imposing, spacious arena right in the middle of the museum. Reminiscent of Rome’s Colosseum, the arena rises up to a great height like a set. Rather than being built of solid brickwork, the walls of the arena are porous. Seen from a distance the arena looks like a huge cake, with a facade made of marzipan.
The installation Feel Good is located in the columned arcade on the left side of the museum’s Historische Halle. Church loudspeakers, decorated with large candles that were blessed in Sicily, are mounted onto the columns and pour forth a soundtrack made up of cliking high heels and the swoosh of traffic. Together with drawings the artist commissioned sex workers to make that illustrate their life realities, they pay tribute to a group that has been ignored by the state and its politicians – not for the first time but during pandemic with a vengeance.

Fat to Ashes was presented in an extensive film installation at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, after winning the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2019. 

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