It’s there where for the first time I had access to art, music, theatre, and above all like-minded people. When I say my first love is literature, it’s not to say that it’s more important to me than art but to acknowledge that it came first. I did the latter.Īfter a couple of years in a small university town I moved to Berlin to finish my studies, and there my whole world changed or rather opened up. In Germany, you have to decide from the very beginning if you want to study to become a teacher, something my mother would have approved of, or get a more advanced degree with which you can’t teach (because it doesn’t include any pedagogy or educational theory). We lived in a small town so there was nothing else to do anyway. For practical reasons, I ended up studying German literature, linguistics and modern history. I had always been an avid reader and ended up essentially living inside whatever book I was reading at the time for many years. Let’s say it forced me to deal with questions of identity and belonging at an age where I wasn’t intellectually and emotionally mature enough to do so. Even though recovered might not be a good way to put this.

The transition was quite difficult and uprooting, and I don’t think I’ve ever properly recovered from it. I spent my childhood or rather my formative years in the same country but in almost equal parts in two very different social and cultural environments. PZ: I was born in East Germany but my family moved to the west after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Q: Can you tell the audience a little more about yourself? The image below is a digital portrait of Petra seated in front of a stop signĪt her website, Petra says: I am a German-born graphic designer, illustrator, extroverted introvert & bibliophile. All images in this post are copyright Petra Zehner and PCC artists. She is a collage artist, working primarily in digital format. Petra Zehner lives in Paris, France and is the founder of the Paris Collage Collective (PCC). She founded the Paris Collage Collective – PCC

Petra beyond a shadow of a doubt music