Whisper Down the Lane –
Sanna Leone

In her installation it takes a village to dump a chair, Sanna Leone explores the question of what responsibility we bear for the physical traces we leave behind and examines the attribution of value and utility. In doing so, she draws on the genre of the vanitas still life, a type of image that points to the transience of human existence through the depiction of symbolic objects. For the work, she uses leftover flea market goods, largely sourced from estate clearances — objects that were forgotten, lost, or left behind at the flea market at the Bahrenfelder Trabrennbahn.

The artist collected the items gathered in the installation at two different times after the market had closed: some before the refuse service clears the site; others have slipped through even that net. Crushed in gravel or scattered among piles of leaves, they have become part of the surroundings and thus invisible. Particularly numerous are objects whose significance arises solely from a personal or emotional attachment rather than from their actual material value or practical use. Alongside toiletries and discarded documents, these are above all decorative and ornamental objects. The artist’s collection offers glimpses of past lives that converge in the car park.

With death, the value of personal belongings is renegotiated: the person who originally gave them meaning is no longer alive. The obstinacy and sudden insignificance of the objects clash with capitalist and ideologically shaped standards of valuation. Yet the remnants persist despite these processes — on windowsills, beneath parked cars, or in rubbish tips, they linger in a state of in-between.