Romy Weber

Romy Weber made the group of figures Geh-Zeiten (The Good Ghosts) in 2001 as an artist in residence in the grounds of the former Rhineland psychiatric hospital Bedburg-Hau. Now used by artists, during the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945 psychiatric patients were housed there, indeed, from 1940 they were incarcerated. Romy Weber uses found objects from the hospital and the immediate vicinity which she has moulded into stelae resembling figures that evince by turns human and animal features. Weber shapes them into “good spirits” positioned in a semi-circle around a trough of meal, they embody a positive turn to history: the titles of the individual stelae (Stag, Kobold, Nandu, Guardian of the Heavens, Goat, Shaman, Sceptre, Prince, Knight and Wild Goose) indicate a profound, spiritual connection to nature. The spirits and ghosts have been given conciliatory form that appeals to the viewer in a protective and watchful way, but also enshrines a sense of warning.