Ornament und Verbrechen
Ornament and Crime consisted of two large-scale billboards installed at the intersection of Potsdamer Straße and Kurfürstenstraße in Berlin. Mounted on existing advertising structures attached to the façade of a post-war commercial building, the intervention featured a portrait of Captain Hendrik Witbooi, leader of the Nama resistance against German colonial occupation in present-day Namibia.
The image, sourced from the Colonial Image Archive in Frankfurt am Main, was digitally transformed to reproduce the colour and texture of the building's light brick façade. Rather than functioning as an autonomous image, the portrait blended into the existing architecture, appearing and disappearing according to the viewer's position and changing light conditions.
Installed on structures normally used for commercial advertising, the work reactivated the façade as a surface for public representation. The title refers to Adolf Loos' 1908 lecture Ornament and Crime, delivered in Berlin while the German colonial wars in Namibia were still being fought. By introducing Witbooi's portrait into Berlin's contemporary urban landscape, the intervention brought together architecture, colonial history and public memory within the everyday fabric of the city.
