’31 visualises the parallels between the interwar period and today’s socio-political landscape. Combining 3D photo objects, mixed-media tableaux, still-life images, video, and sound installations, it argues that current events evoke those between 1918 and 1939, when the world, especially Europe, was on the edge of collapse.

The year 1931 was the turning point. The German economy’s collapse that year set in motion a chain of events that culminated in Hitler’s rise to power and the spread of extremism, casting a long shadow over humanity’s collective history.

Recent events, such as the election wins of several extremist parties in Europe, as well as the changing foreign policy and hollowing of democratic institutions in the USA, remind us of the Nazi Party’s and other authoritarian regimes’ rise to power. The invasion of Ukraine and its justification by Russian leaders echo the annexation of the Sudetenland, while the attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine and the Middle East multiply the horrors of Guernica and Almería. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the same fractures and class inequality that the Spanish flu and the 1929 crash did. Just like the US industry flourished in the 1920s without regulation before the market collapse, today’s tech giants thrive in a regulatory vacuum, monetising the very divisions that threaten democracy.

’31 merges past and present. In the project, original objects from the 1920s and 1930s — radios, newspapers, and clothing — complete staged present scenes, blurring the boundaries between eras. The pieces created since 2019 reference novels, paintings, the history of photography, and events from the interwar period. The project doesn’t reenact historical events. With its references and allegories, it provides time and space for viewers to rediscover historical events and asks: Will we find a different resolution this time?

As Winston Churchill warned, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But the hardest part isn’t learning the lessons; it’s realising the necessity to act before it’s too late.