The lines of this world are like life itself - full of mysterious ways.

They run straight or crooked. They are fragile or wide, visible, or invisible. They guide or seduce. They separate as a boundary, connect as a bridge, create circles or boxes. They merge in a stream or go their own way. They are both start and finish. They end abruptly or disappear into the nowhere of infinity.

In her multi-part work BEHIND THE LINES, Bettina Holm relies on the line as the most fundamental form of artistic expression. It is the dominant graphic element and at the same time interacts with photography, which is equal to it, because both influence each other in their images. Bettina Holm thus combines two worlds, the graphic and the photographic.

With her mixed-media works, Bettina Holm wants to create mental freedom, stimulate the imagination through inscrutability, raise questions, and awaken longings. Often, she contemplates with humor the environment, which presents itself to her in all its diversity, and highlights ambiguities - ones that reveal themselves only on second glance.

Grown up in an artistic environment she finds inspiration in her adopted home of Hamburg and in cities like Paris and Marseille, which she has been visiting since childhood.

Her creative process begins by specifically choosing certain places and letting herself be guided by special moments there. As such, none of her photographs are staged. They arise in passing or incidentally - they arise out of something spontaneous. Anything she experiences in her vicinity can become the next inspiration. Especially exciting for Holm is that she never knows exactly when the unplanned will happen, what motif awaits her that day, and how she will process it afterward.

Bettina Holm operates according to a similar principle in her installations, in which she places real, red lines at selected locations and thus briefly elevates even banal elements of the scenery to artwork that she captures with the camera. After the threads are rolled up, the place regains its original appearance. The artwork is gone. The photo shows the staging. And these shots also show new paths, to which the lines mysteriously guide the viewer.