Link only available on sub pages

In the three-panel painting "The Traitor", pop-culture influences and personal experiences are intricately interwoven. The work deals with the complexity of human relationships including their pitfalls. A young man is connected to an unknown person by a cable that runs through his ear and mouth. Holding his hand up to his mouth, he secretly reports something to this person. The painting recasts a cover photo from a 1963 record by the soul singer Jackie Wilson, and at the same time, Cornelia Schleime creates a link to her autobiography: it was only after being banned from exhibiting and after submitting five emigration applications that the artist was permitted to leave East Germany in 1984. In the 1990s, she learned that a friend, in his capacity as an "unofficial employee" of the State Security Service of the GDR (Stasi), had given detailed reports about her private life and the art scene.