Homecoming

It is always a little bit of a strange feeling to return home once you’re a grown-up. Some of us still have our childhood rooms that we sleep in when visiting our parents, others might stay in a repurposed room, or their home has been abandoned because their parents have moved somewhere else—or because they are no longer around.

This week will be a such strange homecoming for me. An artistic one, and yet a personal homecoming as well.  In all honesty- I never know where to draw the line between the two.
There’s that old saying: “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.”
Meaning, as long as you stay where you were born, no one will really buy into your prophecies. You’re still just one of them, part of the local caste, expected to behave like everyone else.

Real prophets, it seems, are supposed to leave town early, get pushed around by the world, grow a beard, collect wisdom like souvenirs—and only then come back, ready to be either celebrated or beheaded. Depending on the day. I’ve done quite a few  things to not get beheaded next Monday; I’ve left home early, I’ve suffered a substantial deal, I’ve collected friends and foes in four of the five continents (South America – I’ll be coming for you next) and I’ve buried people on three out of the five. The further away that you’ve been, the weirder it is to come back home.

So this is next-level weird: having a solo exhibition just eight minutes from the town—I mean, the village—I grew up in. The Kunsthalle-esque looking art association I’m showing with is eight minutes from the little brook where I used to pull out native crabs to scare my friends; eight minutes from the stick fencing with wooden swords I practiced so fiercely with my brother; eight minutes from the crossing where I crashed my bike when I was seven and tore my face open. 

Now, installing the show, all these places feel light-years away. They’re still there, but their context has forever shifted. Visiting them now is like visiting a film set of my own past. Coming home is also strange because you remember who you were before you knew everything you know now.

And I find myself wondering if, back then, I might have already anticipated some of the things that would happen to me—when I couldn’t possibly have. Weren’t there signs, some weird foreshadowing, like there always seem to be in any German novel? Just remember the first pages of Effi Briest, where you think—as a student—that you are suffering through a boring description of a cute garden— when in reality it is some elaborate foretelling of the fucked up story that is yet to unfold.

I think about the critical junctures in my life, the pivotal moments, and I just can’t help playing these what if-games. What if I’d skipped that trip? Never boarded that plane?
Would I be happier? Dumber? More sarcastic? Less so?

Normally, setting up an exhibition is about the future—who will see your work, how people will engage with it, what they might write about it. Its about the work, not about me as a person— even though that always is somewhere in there too. Making an exhibition rarely is about looking back at the person you once were.

But this week will be different. I won’t be able to avoid looking back at myself as an eight-year-old. And, not enough with that, others will look at me as that strange eight-year-old who somehow became the person doing an art show just eight minutes from home. I know they’ll look at me differently—which is neither good nor bad.
But the disconnect between the kid I was and the person I am now will be written across their faces and because I’m oddly sensitive, it will make me uncomfortable for sure. I’ve had nice chats with hot curators, blue chip gallerists and sought-after collectors but I am anxious to hear what my former art teacher and my mother will say about the show. Possibly the toughest crowd I have ever faced.

Every exhibition feels different for me. It’s a different show whether I’m showing paintings in a gallery in London,or whether I’m hosting an open studio in New York, or participate in a museum show in Shanghai — but this time it will be gut-wrenching in some multi-layered way, where the prophet comes home and hopes that she won’t be beheaded.

I will sleep in the same room that I have slept in as a 4-year-old. My mother will be sleeping in the same house in the same street; the street in which the village graveyard is located, in which my father sleeps. It will be a strange week for me.

Charlie Stein: Paraworlds, Kunstverein Schorndorf until July 27, 2025