Who knows the Neustadt and the Hecht, also knows Ingo R. Dancing, discussing, smoking and tireless. The artist is probably the most exciting import the Black Forest had to offer and enriches the neighborhood with scene. A visit to her studio and home.

In Ingo’s realm, it smells of smoke and smoke work, no smooth wall lets the eye rest. From all angles looks faces, ghosts, demons. Person and art in Ingo R are inseparable. The table bears brushstrokes, the tiled stove is a small gallery, the bedroom is a store. When asked how she came to art, Ingo looks like the tree that you ask why it has roots. Photography, sculpture, painting – “It’s all inside me. I’ve been involved with art since I’ve been alive.” When ‘something wants to get out’, Ingo is at the easel for ten hours, without interruption. You can believe it, considering her sinewy arms, beady-eyed steady gaze and strong will. Her hands are smooth, with delicate fingers, like those of a young girl. Her voice is like rough blues.

Ingo came to Dresden 24 years ago. Dresden is one stop after many: in the 70s she traveled alone through Turkey and North Africa, followed by 15 years in Zurich, eight years in Philadelphia, then Paris. Always she lived in artist groups, exchanged ideas, inhaled the other culture. “I know people from all over the world. I can move anywhere.” For a long time, she worked in art therapy: in hospice, in rehab, with teenagers. “They worked funny in some cases” she says thoughtfully, referring to the facilities. “With carrots and sticks.” She herself talked to turkey with the young people, set her rules, gave an extra ration of cigarettes, invited ‘to throw up’ in her studio and listened. After thirty years, she wanted to do her own thing.

“Dresden has become my home. Here you meet cultural workers from all over the world” says Ingo, tracing her lipstick and dabbing away the excess red with a tissue. “Sure, it’s hardcore what goes on here. But I’m confident.” Her vision for the future? “Germany Nazi-free.” Ingo R lives and works on, with a lot of natural curiosity, natural humanism, and a wild heart as red and fresh as her lipstick.

Alex Affenzahn + Gabriele Nagel