Kaffeemitte

MARINA ANKEN / Illustration
„Truffles“ / 2026 Berlin
Marina Anken is from Switzerland and has been living in Berlin since 2020, where she studied social design. In her work, she uses the graphic novel format, with a thematic focus on fashion and clothing.
In 2022, she spent a holiday in Umbria. There, she stumbled upon an announcement for a textile exhibition, which introduced her to the „L’OFFICINA Imagination Lab“. This venue is dedicated to art and local traditions and contains an archive for exclusive textiles from Kashmir—an extensive fabric collection linked to questions of origin, craftsmanship, and history. L’OFFICINA hosts events, runs a library, and offers artist residencies.
For Marina, who was already thinking about the outlines for a graphic novel about the fashion industry at the time, many things clicked into place. She decided to apply for a residency and spent the month of November 2022 at L’OFFICINA in Monteleone d’Orvieto.
The stay marked the starting point for her current book project. Marina made sketches and notes of her observations: the hilly landscape of Umbria, cypress trees, winding roads, and the experience of slowly travelling through the region. Added to this was her intense engagement with the fashion industry and the appeal of handcrafted materials in an industrialised world. She is still working on this ambitious graphic novel today, and the excitement and expectations are growing.
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NEVER WORK by Darren Cullen
Risograph print on cartridge paper. Blue soy-based ink - London 2024
The British artist Darren Cullen (Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives) is known for his sharp, satirical works that mock some of the most powerful institutions of our time. His projects have taken on the oil giant Shell, exposed the realities of military recruitment, and questioned the ideology of constant growth and neoliberalism. Darren Cullen’s work has been exhibited at Banksy’s Dismaland and acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum for its permanent collection in London.
I’ve admired his work for many years—not only for its aesthetic and conceptual strength, but for the enduring courage behind it. In a cultural landscape where artists often avoid confrontation, he consistently pushes against authority with a clear moral compass. The piece „Never Work“ embodies this approach: using the familiar, conservative imagery of mid-20th-century advertising—idealized femininity, tidy hair, a TV set—the artist turns the message on its head. Instead of affirming productivity, efficiency, and consumption, his statement subverts them with humor. I’m proud to include this image in the show, as it reminds us of something funny: that art can still be, even today, political and satirical.

WALDVILLA by Lubomír Fiala
Vlkov, Czechia 2020 / Wax tempera
For the third edition of the „Woman Portrait Gallery“ at Kaffeemitte, I sought an artist from another generation to contribute a female portrait. This led me to Lubomír Fiala, born in 1949 in Plzeň. In the context of the group show, I was interested in Fiala’s perspective as an experienced craftsman and professional carpenter — as well as his choice of materials for painting. Fiala works with wax tempera, a traditional technique in which pigments are mixed with wax and water to create a naturally luminous and durable surface. From this starting point—the rare wax tempera technique and Fiala’s artistic background—I began to consider a possible connection between the materials he uses and the motifs in his paintings. His works often feature animals, plants, and recurring motifs such as trees in the wind, roosters, or monkeys. In the piece proposed for the exhibition, a female figure seamlessly blends into an organic world, intertwined with leaves, branches, and animals, as if part of a natural puzzle. And so, Fiala’s work reminds me of concepts like „Mother Nature“ or „Pachamama“. While these qualities aren’t exclusive to mothers, they are archetypically associated with them: the nurturing, elemental presence of nature itself. This work, therefore, conveys the awareness that we all, regardless of gender, are part of nature.