German artist and science journalist Marita Vollborn on the role of her investigative past, her East German upbringing, the confrontational power of works like “Familie,” and why she is glad her bronze sculpture ARES was selected for the Chianciano Biennale 2026.
Marita Vollborn, born in 1965 in Erfurt in the former GDR, has spent decades exposing systemic failures as an investigative science and economics journalist. Since 2010 she has pursued a parallel path as a sculptor. Her project Sinn und Scherben (“Sense and Shards”) comprises around fifty expressive clay and bronze figures that explore pain, power, guilt, courage and societal contradiction. In August 2026 her bronze ARES will be shown at the Chianciano Biennale in Tuscany as a Selected Artist. In this exclusive interview she speaks about the connections between her two professions, the lasting influence of dictatorship, and why her art deliberately refuses to be comfortable.
Marita, what role do your experiences as an investigative science journalist play in your artistic work?
They form the foundation — and at the same time the deliberate counterpart. For years I worked with facts, research and precise language. I investigated corruption in the healthcare sector, the food industry, science and political conflicts of interest. Books such as Die Gesundheitsmafia or Die Joghurt-Lüge grew out of the need to make systemic wrongdoing visible that many prefer to keep hidden.
In sculpture I consciously let go of that control. Since 2010, in the project Sinn und Scherben, I shape with my hands what cannot — or does not want to — be fully put into words. The sculptures emerge intuitively. They make human ambivalence visible: strength and weakness, power and guilt, fragility and resistance. Journalism taught me to look where others look away. Art gives that gaze a sensual, immediate form. It is the place where the unsayable takes shape.
And why does your GDR past also flow into your sculptures?
Because it has shaped my entire understanding of freedom, power and truth. I was born in 1965 in Erfurt and grew up in Thuringia. At school — the “Yuri Gagarin” extended secondary school — I experienced how art, philosophy and free thought were censored. One was expected to believe what the regime prescribed. Freedom of thought was a distant dream. I never joined the SED. In 1989 I took part in the peaceful protests in Berlin and witnessed the fall of the Wall.
That experience — growing up under a system that silenced dissent while speaking of peace — sits deep. It makes me sensitive to every form of power abuse, to ideological hardening, and to what remains hidden beneath the surface. Many of my figures carry autobiographical traces. They speak of hope and loss, of courage and pain, of social change. The GDR showed me what it means when language and images are controlled. That is why I refuse, in my art, to be pleasing or merely decorative. Critical art comes before commerce — that is my guiding principle.
Your sculptures are sometimes very hard. “Familie,” for example, addresses abuse by parents. What do you want to achieve with such themes?
Yes, some of my sculptures are hard. Familie deals with abuse by parents — a subject that is still often taboo or played down in our society. I do not want to shock for the sake of shock. I want to make visible what many experience and what one is taught to remain silent about. The family is regarded as a protective space. Yet it can also be the place where power, dependency and violence act most intimately and most destructively.
With such themes I want the viewer to be unable to look away. I want them to feel the ambivalence: closeness and threat at the same time. Art can achieve something here that journalism alone often cannot — it touches emotionally before the mind rationalises. I hope such works open conversations, that they give those affected the feeling of being seen, and that they make those who still look away pause. It is about truth, not sensation. And about the question of how we as a society deal with what is destroyed in the most intimate relationships.
“ARES” is also a highly critical work, and that is why it was selected for the Chianciano Biennale 2026. What do you say about that?
ARES is indeed a very critical work — and I am grateful and proud that it will be shown at the Chianciano Biennale in Tuscany in 2026. The bronze was created in 2015, yet it feels as if it was made for the present. It bears the name of the Greek god of war — not the heroic figure, but the bloodthirsty, unrestrained force. It embodies militarism, violence and, above all, the greed for profit that lies behind so many conflicts. More than eighty million deaths in two world wars were apparently not enough to stop the arms race and the incitement to war.
ARES is not a simple anti-war message. It is an examination of the mechanisms: how power, greed and ideology turn people into instruments of destruction. The figure radiates raw, threatening energy. It does not want to please; it wants to confront. That the jury of the Biennale selected this work means a great deal to me. It shows that there are still spaces in which critical, uncomfortable art is welcome — spaces where one is not merely entertained but invited to think. In a time of geopolitical tension I hope that ARES will spark conversations in Chianciano: about responsibility, about the question of who profits from conflict, and about the fact that we are not only victims or perpetrators, but capable of change and compassion.
Interview conducted for pugnalom.io. Marita Vollborn’s bronze sculpture ARES will be on view at the Chianciano Biennale 2026 (15–29 August) at the Chianciano Art Museum, Tuscany. Further information: maritavollborn.art
