Heimwehen

«Heimwehen» is a invented word that thinks homesickness and birth pangs together — an expression of the painful effort to bring something precious into a familiar world. Yet biography itself stands in the way of that longing for home.

The starting point was a 55th birthday spent in her old homeland, far from her children and the culture that has shaped her for over thirty years. In dense, barely legible handwriting, Danielle Orsinger filled 55 sheets of parchment — alternating between Swiss German, Hebrew, English, and Standard German in a pattern she cannot herself explain.

Crumpled scraps of paper cover the writing beneath. What emerges through material manipulation and collage feels even more personal to her than words alone. A sewn red thread — a recurring element in her work — holds together what appears fragmented: life and belonging, in spite of everything.