She saw a picture of him on a poster announcing a reading – and was immediately blown away. The painter Silke Markefka and the writer Nikolai Vogel have been a couple for 26 years. How they manage to bridge their differences and find strength in the criticism of the other.
from
Evelyn Vogel, Munich
“Let’s start right in the middle,” suggests Nikolai Vogel. Right in the middle, that means for the writer and his partner, the painter Silke Markefka, on March 10th, 2020. Markefka had just opened the exhibition “Weightless” in the platform and was actually very happy with the show. Vogel had given the opening speech. “But there was already a strange atmosphere that evening,” remembers Markefka. The latest news about the corona virus hung over everything like dark clouds from an approaching thunderstorm. Then came the first lockdown on March 16, and the exhibition was canceled after only six days. “It was one of my most beautiful and one of my shortest,” says Markefka with a bitter laugh in her voice. “In retrospect, it feels like the end of an era,” says Vogel.