In early March 2023, Genevieve Rust, volunteer at the Olivier Cornet Gallery wrote about Susanne Wawra's 'Fischkopp mit Zerrewanst'. This work is available for purchase (575 euro).

"Susanne Wawra’s ‘Fischkopp mit Zerrewanst,’ meaning Fishhead with a Squeezebox in German, examines the intricacies of memory, celebration, music, and family gathering. Wawra frequently utilises photo transfer in her painted works which imbues her pieces with a reflective nostalgia. The medium of film photography, especially its reproduction and usage in other visual works, has always captivated me and is what initially drew me to Wawra’s work. I grew up around analogue cameras as my dad has been a hobby photographer for many decades. I began shooting on 35mm film in 2018, and it is still something I am very passionate about.

The photographs reproduced by the artist are sourced from her own familial belongings and discarded collections sold online. This collection method inspires a feeling of mystery when viewing her works – who are these people? What is their story? How does it connect to Wawra’s life, if at all? In ‘Fischkopp mit Zerrewanst,’ Wawra has transferred an image captured at her parents’ wedding of an accordion player who “won’t stop playing, while everyone is hoping for the DJ to come on.” The central figure is encompassed by thick, swirling lines that create liveliness and active motion. She uses rectangular shapes in a variety of sizes, textures, and colours to ground the work within itself and create an almost architectural framework around the accordionist. Warwa uses an abundance of medium, including acrylic paint, oil paint, and oil pastel to construct the piece. The layered alternation of media, colour, and shape, alongside the physicality of the photo transfer, construct a profound and varied texture. 

‘Fischkopp mit Zerrewanst’ was displayed in Susanne Wawra’s 2022 solo show ‘Remmidemmi’ at the Custom House Studios in Westport, County Mayo. Remmidemmi is a German phrase meaning “exuberant, frolicking, antics.” This state of being is channelled through the emphasis of creating motion within Wawra’s works. The show, which ran from 17th March to the 10th of April 2022, was themed around the unattainability of Remmidemmi due to the loss of community during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The exhibition sees Wawra yearning for the communal experiences of her childhood, particularly through the lens of family. Wawra was raised in East Berlin; the family photographs adapted in her work (including the one used in ‘Fischkopp mit Zerrewanst’), as well as the images sourced from online collections, were taken prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. When presented alongside one another in an exhibition setting, the divergent origins of these images create a discourse of narrative uncertainty woven together by their central theme of Remmidemmi. Wawra exhibited a diverse array of mediums within this exhibition, placing mixed media paintings and drawings alongside relief carvings and sculptural works.

Wawra’s work has also been displayed in the 2019 group exhibition “A Vague Anxiety” at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Curated by Seán Kissane, this exhibition was themed around expressing both broad and intimately personal concerns of Generation Y through a vast array of traditional and non-traditional mediums. In 2020, Wawra conducted a solo show entitled “Fernauslöser (Remote Release)” in her native Germany. The same year she debuted another solo show, "Sitzfleisch” both online and in-person at the Olivier Cornet Gallery. Her work has also been featured in Dublin’s The LAB Gallery and the Luan Gallery in Athlone.

For me, ‘Fischkopp mit Zerrewanst’ by Susanne Wawra represents both the encapsulation of a moment and the complex process of remembering that point in time. Memory provides a means of fluidity and change, a way to fundamentally abstract and reinterpret (whether knowingly or unknowingly) a distinctive event. Her amalgamation of photo transfer and painted elements in a finely-tuned colour palette establish a highly unique and captivating sense of liveliness which amplifies the wistful sentimentality of a captured moment."