About Bettina Pousttchi

Bettina Pousttchi lives and works in Berlin. Between 1992 and 2000 she followed various international art courses. She makes sculptures, but architecture and photography also play a prominent role in her work. For example, by applying wall or facade-filling photographic installations. With these photographic interventions she often refers to the urban or historical context of a place. Pousttchi is currently one of Germany’s leading contemporary artists and has several international exhibitions to her credit.

Pousttchi is strongly interested in the structures of public space. This is also apparent from her Vertical Highways sculpture group, which she will show at ARTZUID, for which she has used crash barriers. Placing it vertically changes the spatial perception of the viewer. Since 2005, Pousttchi has been using forms she finds on the street, such as crush barriers, bollards, or bicycle racks. They are objects that surround us every day and determine how we move through public space. Often, we are not aware of how much our movements are affected by such barriers. Pousttchi shows us how crowds are controlled by crowd control, a phenomenon that was more topical than ever during the Covid pandemic and a socially distanced society.

Pousttchi manipulates elements of street furniture with the aim of making them visible. She performs this process intuitively using a mechanical press. By bending the guardrails and placing them upright, they become almost human. It seems that the guardrails are hugging each other, despite their original purpose being to divide.