Peter Pflügler
Peter Pflügler is a visual storyteller currently living in the Netherlands and Austria. He studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. His work is centered around the dynamics of secrets and intergenerational trauma. With the use of moving image, photography and performance, he focuses on personal stories in order to highlight universal issues. He believes that the hidden dark spots in our family history trickle through the silence and influence our lives. Since their origin lie in the unknown, we struggle putting them into a narrative. This friction is also apparent in his photographic methods, where he merges the banal and the mysterious, the observed and the staged.
“Now is not the right time started out as a story about my father’s suicide attempt. When I was two years old, he went into the woods with the intention of never coming back. This project was an investigation into the traces of a well-kept family secret. While I was revisiting my parents’ trauma – its places, objects and memories that I could not call my own – I found it here, inside myself. My body always knew. This is no longer a story about a suicide attempt. This is about the impossibility of secrets, about what we are sharing when we hide. This is about pain inflicted out of love, about the complexity of silence, and the unexplainable sadness of a boy. Mum, Dad, this is your trauma, that you kept wrapped up in countless colorful blankets and yet unknowingly handed over to me in a loving embrace. I will carry it with care.” – Peter Pflügler, 2021
Shortlisted Artist
All print sales enquiries or to see more from this artist:
tom@opendoors.gallery
