“Hör zu, ich erzähle dir was / “Listen, I’ll tell you something.” is a body of work dedicated to the stories rooted in my Central European ancestry. Through anthropomorphized animals, I pass on knowledge carried in the folklore of the lands my family lived in before coming to Canada.Moving through Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, this story unfolds as the viewer is guided through a sequence of tales derived from the cities shaped by my ancestors’ lives. Rooted in folklore, children’s stories, and symbolic traditions, these narratives carry knowledge passed down through generations, where animals emerge as recurring storytellers. The personification of animals in stories allows for the exaggeration of human ideals and morals without explicitly telling a story about humans. Recognising the change in these stories is my own way of undoing empire, a way to find my culture again, as my grandparents who fled their homelands during WWII lost the majority of their cultural knowledge to assimilation. My body of work acknowledges my German and Austrian history, rekindling my own culture and reconnecting me with a piece of the knowledge that shaped those before me.”