Bröckling describes post-heroic conditions not as weakness but as a different relationship to certainty. When you encountered that framework, what did it clarify about works you had already chosen?

When Bröckling speaks of postheroic times, he means a present in which classical heroic figures are increasingly viewed skeptically, as too pathetic, too unambiguous, often also too strongly shaped by traditional role models. At the same time, the need for figures of identification has by no means disappeared. On the contrary: today it shows itself in more diverse, more contradictory forms, from activists to whistleblowers to figures from pop culture and sport. What became clear to me through Bröckling's considerations: it is less about the disappearance of the heroic than about a shift, towards ambivalent, broken figures. And it is precisely this ambivalence that I recognized again in many works of my collection. Many of the works already carry moments of failure, fragility or even self-destruction within themselves. They negotiate tensions between strength and vulnerability, between pathos and skepticism. Themes such as identity, masking, veiling or also conscious overstrain play a central role. It is precisely this friction that makes the anti-heroic figure so interesting for contemporary artists. In a world that increasingly understands itself as complex and contradictory, flawless heroic figures appear almost implausible. The anti-hero, on the other hand, offers a more open, more honest projection surface, one that allows breaks and does not hide uncertainties, but makes them productive. One can also only be an anti-hero in a moment, like in a crisis. I find that very encouraging.

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Han Kang's protagonist in The Vegetarian doesn't argue, she withdraws. She refuses participation as a form of agency. In a cultural moment defined by declarations and positions, do you think refusal has become its own intellectual stance?

The figure in Han Kang's The Vegetarian occupied me precisely because her resistance is not loud or argumentative, but quiet, consistent and radically physical. She withdraws, and precisely in that lies her agency. Karin Janker described this very aptly in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: the plant becomes here the counter-image to the classical hero, passive, silent, and yet of great consequence. This form of refusal irritates because we live in a present that is strongly shaped by positionings, opinions and visibility. All the more exciting it is when a figure completely withdraws from this system. One could say: refusal here indeed becomes its own intellectual stance, one that does not function through language, but through withdrawal, reduction and consequence. This also recalls literary figures such as Bartleby, whose "I would prefer not to" formulates a similar form of radical passivity, with existential consequences. This stance is ambivalent: it can be read as self-empowerment, but also as a form of isolation or failure. Interestingly, I also encounter this form of silent resistance in contemporary art. For example with Annette Merkenthaler, whose works allow natural growth processes and consciously relinquish control, or with Marina Faust, whose Rolling Stools withdraw from clear attributions and oscillate between function, play and irritation. Visitors are invited to move through the exhibition while sitting on them. These works refuse unambiguity, and precisely therein lies their power. At the same time, one must not forget that refusal also has a long political tradition. The African American Rosa Parks, for example, triggered an enormous social movement with a single, quiet refusal to stand up on the bus for a white woman. This shows that withdrawal or non-action are not necessarily passive, but can be highly effective. In this field of tension also moves the figure of the anti-heroine in Han Kang: between personal withdrawal and political dimension. Refusal becomes here a stance that cannot be appropriated, and precisely for that reason is so relevant.​

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The Doppelgänger appears across the exhibition as a recurring structure, doubling, mirroring, the self encountering itself from the outside. What does that motif allow you to express that a single figure cannot?

Reflections and duplications appear again and again in the exhibition because they make a central characteristic of the anti-hero visible: ambivalence. While classical heroes are often unambiguous, anti-heroes carry contradictions within themselves, and this can be represented particularly well through the motif of the doppelgänger. The exhibition assembles alter egos, doppelgängers and figures to whom, in a certain sense, a part of themselves has been withdrawn. They stand for inner tornness, for the feeling of facing oneself or no longer recognizing oneself in one's own image. One example is the work by Jaime Welsh, who in "The Ambassador's Suite (revisited)" doubles the image of a child and thus creates the illusion of twins or clones. Reality and fiction begin to blur, and at the same time the fragility of our perception becomes visible. This duplication is embedded in an architecture from the time of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, whereby questions of power, powerlessness and historical memory are also inscribed. The mirror is not only a means of duplication, but also a symbol of self-perception. In the context of the anti-hero, this can often be read in the field of tension between narcissism and self-staging. Thus, for example, Julian-Jakob Kneer works in his self-portraits with a silicone mask that imitates his own face. This artificial duplication makes it possible for him to build distance from himself, from his own opinions, emotions and role models. From this emerges an ambivalent figure between self-control and self-loss, which also touches on questions of celebrity culture and self-destruction. This double structure also becomes visible in the series "BASTARDS": through the collage of different film posters, from horror and children's films, an irritating overlay emerges that shows how permeable the boundaries between good and evil are. The doppelgänger here is less a second figure than rather an indication that we always also carry these opposites within ourselves. Not least, this motif continues in the mediation space, which we created together with Sebastian Schmitt as a kind of archive. Mirrors meet the visitors there quite directly, provided with quotations from anti-hero narratives. The books themselves, which I partly gathered from antiquarian bookshops, are presented on mirrored surfaces. In this way, the viewers literally become part of this structure: they encounter themselves in the context of the stories and figures. The doppelgänger therefore makes something possible that a single figure can hardly achieve: it makes inner contradictions visible, externalizes conflicts and opens a space in which identity appears not as fixed, but as fragmented and negotiable.​​