Through his works, Dieter Mammel (b. 1965) opens a window into his inner world, exploring the human condition, both through the prism of his own family’s tragedy, shaped by the bleak events of World War II, and through the eyes of those who are going through similar events today. His maternal grandmother was born in Romania, in Timișoara, and his grandfather came from Kacarevo, Serbia, from where his grandmother fled to Austria in the 1940s with her daughters. His grandfather didn’t return to his family until the beginning of the next decade, after serving as a prisoner of war in Serbia for 7 years, and then the whole family moved to Germany. Mammel’s father was also a refugee. As a Bessarabian German, he fled with his family from Klöstnitz, Ukraine, in a horse-drawn wagon traveling west.

Mammel’s personal contribution to helping his fellow human beings is reflected in his creative work, preoccupied with the humanitarian crisis of the 21st century, and searching for a way to give a voice to the most vulnerable among us, who cannot express their longings.These human stories chart a cyclical trajectory of suffering initiated by the conflagrations, thus making her family’s story a representative pattern for the millions of refugees and displaced people who sought refuge across Europe in the aftermath of World War II. In 2015, the artist, on the Greek island of Kos, witnessed the first boats of Syrian refugees being dropped off. Back in Germany, he joined children in refugee centers to draw with them. Thus the project “Zeig mir, woher Dukommst” (Show me where you come from) was born.

Through the six themes of Homeland, War, Refuge, Shelter, Family Album and Survival, Mammel addresses both the experience of collective trauma lived by those marked by the consequences of war, as well as everyday subjects that point to the difficult path of healing from these traumas. In addition to these themes, the artist, together with leading artists from the museum’s permanent collections whose work spans from the 19th century to the present, explores the themes of Death and Estrangement, eventually culminating in an Epilogue in three of the exhibition spaces.Working outside the canon of contemporary art, Dieter uses his training as a printmaker as a starting point, reinterpreting the familiar figurative in an innovative manner that shows a perfect mastery of realism. His diaphanous works in colored inks are at once emotive and sensitive as well as animated by an undeniable force, sincerely exposing the artist’s entire inner world on canvas. The intense colors used by the artist in his works almost suggest intense moods associated with the experiences of the characters that populate his paintings. Lifeline is therefore a lifeline, which charts Mammel’s artistic path over the last 20 years, up to the present moment, when the artist opens his 100th exhibition, which connects Banat with Germany and Serbia, together with the Timișoara Art Museum in the Ioachim Miloia Gallery.