The Project

In myths and legends, the crane is a symbol of longevity, loyalty, vigilance and wisdom. It is the bringer of good fortune and the harbinger of spring. In Japan it was believed to reach up to a thousand years of age. This is the origin of the legend that whoever folds a thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish.

Over the next years, I will build a thousand light-objects whose body is an origami crane. Whoever purchases a luminous crane may post its location and a wish on the world map on this website.

When I have folded a thousand cranes, I shall wish for all the wishes that were published here to come true.

About me

Mahela Rostek

I am a freelance artist based in Berlin, Germany. In my participatory performance projects I provide a space and framework for participants to explore aspects of their own personal lives. I have shown my work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at various festivals in Berlin.

Art offers opportunities for overcoming boundaries, discrimination and alienation between people. Recurring themes in my work are elemental human experiences as finiteness, absence, death, wishing, fear, remembering and forgetting, as well as phenomena of time such as the experience of deceleration.

EINERvonTAUSEND is my first project that allows participants to be connected through the possession of an object of art and the act of making a wish.

I studied set and costume design in London at the Central St. Martins College of Art & Design. In 2009 I graduated from Royal Central School of Speech & Drama with an MA in 'Performance Practices and Research'.

For further information about my performance projects, please visit my personal website www.mahelarostek.de

Press

Tagesspiegel Potsdamer Neuste Nachrichten: Wenn die Kraniche glühen. Auf der Suche nach Licht / by Lena Schneider / 27.11.2021 (only in German). More...

Nordbayerischer Kurier: Mit Mahela Rostek das Wünschen üben / by Katharina Fink / 23.08.2016 (only in German). More ...

In April 2015 I was interviewed by Quadrat mit Lippen. Here you can find the video (only in German):
More...