"Winding down". Discover contemporary artistic interpretations of spa culture in the historic bathing temple Friedrichsbad Baden-Baden. The impressive works by Sarah Dillon and Eva Flora Prühs are on display in the historic Kneipp bath until 31 July!

The notion of "Winding down" captures the essence of the spa in three senses: it bespeaks a Descent, into water, into a different world; but also entails Relaxation, leaving stressful reality behind; and it has negative connotations of Decay. Fjodor Dostojewski, one of the most famous Russian visitors to Baden Baden, depicted this European dream destination in highly critical terms as epitomizing German philistinism and western decadence. The exhibition is part of the Baden Baden World Heritage Celebrations.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault encapsulated this sense of spaces we wind down into and which thereby leave us changed in his equally celebrated concept of the ‘heterotopia’ (from the Greek ‘hetero’ = ‘other’/‘different’ and ‘topos’ = ‘place’). Heterotopia: the word sounds mysterious, poetic. The idea behind it is a simple one. Human beings need ‘other places’ in order to take a step back from the pressures and rules of normal life. The spa resort is a heterotopia. But so too are museums – or libraries or baths like the Friedrichsbad, in which our exhibition is being held.

Water: In the popular imagination, water is probably the central element of the spa town or health resort – though actually air, sunlight and less luminous elements such as mud and peat are no less important remedies. Water is either drunk or bathed in be it in heated thermal pools or in the rough sea. This results in different forms of meeting and conversation: in large groups gathering to gossip at the fountains and on the promenades; or in intimate conversation - sometimes mere monologues - in and around the tubs and pools of the baths. But there is always also an encounter taking place with one's own body, mediated through the touch and movement of the water. Sometimes the boundaries between the body and its surroundings, the body and society become blurred

The young artists Sarah Dillon und Eva Prühs dramatize these questions, experiences and theories pictorially. Sarah Dillon stages her own bathtub as a place of self-encounter and interrogates the connotations of water between going under and coming back to life. Eva Prühs displaces the calculated chess moves of our rational life into underwater worlds, in resonant pictures reminiscent of fantastic novels.

The artists

Sarah Dillon grew up as an outcast in a small, conservative American town, and made her escape as a young adult.

With her photos, she wants you to imagine you arecompletely submerged underwater. Eyes shut. Sounds muted. Completely alone. Do you feel peace or panic? Will the water wash it all away or drag you under?

Eva Prühs was born and raised in Hamburg, graduated from the htk academy in 2020, and now works as a graphic designer whilst broadening her interests as a post-graduate student.

Her collages take as their starting point the contrasting aesthetic alignment of beauty with youth and health and ugliness with sickness and decay. For Nietzsche, the two were mutually dependent – a phenomenon clearly visible in the early days of German spas.

Concept and organization

Artworks: Sarah Dillon, Eva Prühs
Artistic concept: Gaby Bergmann
Academic concept and text: Henrike Schmidt und Astrid Köhler
Co-ordination und organization: Julia Bischoff, Lisa Poetschki, Wiebke Kolbe
Design: Jalal Hosseini

Sponsors: Carasana Bäderbetriebe Baden-Baden, Welterbefest Baden-Baden (Baden Baden World Heritage Celebrations), The European Spa Project.