Prisoner of Yourself, 1998

For our Wall Works edition project, Rosemarie Trockel virtually installed her wall piece Prisoner of Yourself in two strikingly contrasting architectural contexts. The first was the salon of Villa Wittgenstein in Vienna, an austere and rigorously designed space conceived by Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1928 – an embodiment of precision, clarity, and restraint. The second setting was the modest interior of a cottage near Ahmedabad, built in 1918 by Mahatma Gandhi, where he lived with his wife until 1930. Here, the spinning wheel becomes a powerful symbol of Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence and the call for local, self-sufficient textile production, free from British colonial control. By placing Prisoner of Yourself in these two charged environments – one shaped by philosophical rigor, the other by political resistance – Trockel draws attention to how space, history, and ideology shape our perception of art. The work becomes a mediator between worlds, quietly interrogating the boundaries between domesticity, autonomy, and artistic expression.