by Reiner Heidorn
Growing up amid Germany’s layered history, I am formed by memory, guilt, and responsibility. My work interrogates how national narratives are taught, remembered, and contested—how the past persists in the present through images, spaces, and speech.
The school maps’ erased borders and re-coded place-names evoke questions of jurisdiction, belonging, and education. Overlaying botanical-water motifs transforms these surfaces into a lagoon-like field where memory can flow, accrete, and refract light.
The maps have been radically painted over, so that the original content is no longer visible. Only the titles remain as a silent reminder of a dark era. Through botanical motifs, I create a contrast between life, growth, and memory: Nature grows beyond the past, yet traces of history remain visible in the choice of motifs, the structure of the image, and the colors—a warning against forgetting, trivialization, and denial of history. The overpainting transforms the maps into new pictorial spaces in which criticism, memory, and responsibility become visible.
In this framework, personal structures serve as a meditative engine: they translate trauma into inquiry, care, and action, inviting viewers to navigate memory as a living, changing landscape.
Reiner Heidorn is a German painter with a focus on freshwater microorganisms, plants, and chlorophyll. Using his own technique, he translates the pointillism of microscope photographs into abstract expressionism. He also collects natural materials and uses leaves, twigs, and blossoms as print templates for his abstract, botanical pictorial spaces.
Reiner Heidorn has collected old school maps and paints them over, including maps from the Nazi regime. In doing so, he aims to keep historical memory alive and take a stand against denial.
Learn more about the project on Instagram @overpaintinghistory.
