Was ist Heimat?
Das Projekt Was ist Heimat? ist ein fortlaufendes künstlerisches und literarisches Projekt.
Es verbindet Bild und Lyrik, persönliche Erinnerung und gesellschaftliche Reflexion / What Is Home? is an ongoing artistic and literary project that brings together visual art and poetry, personal memory and collective reflection.
The German word Heimat has no direct English equivalent. While it is often translated as home, its meaning reaches much further. It can describe a place, a landscape, a language, a community, a memory, or an inner sense of belonging. At the same time, the term carries a complex political and historical legacy in Germany, making it both deeply meaningful and deeply contested.
Home is a deeply charged concept. It lies at the heart of social and political debates, is often appropriated for ideological purposes, and carries profound emotional weight. Yet beneath all of this, it speaks to a fundamentally human longing: the desire to belong—to find a place, both in the world and within ourselves, where we can truly arrive.
This question has accompanied me since my youth. It emerged through my engagement with literature on exile, through conversations about flight and displacement, through the stories of my ancestors, and through my own long-standing, often nameless feeling of not quite belonging.
For me, the word home has always remained deeply ambivalent: shaped by history, burdened by misuse, yet impossible to abandon.
I believe we cannot leave the idea of home to those who seek to use it as a means of excluding others.
Rather than offering answers, this project invites questions. It is an attempt to make my own questions visible while leaving space for each person to discover what home might mean to them.
Fragen, die bleiben:
Ist Heimat ein Ort?
Kann man Heimat verlieren?
Gibt es eine Mehrzahl von Heimat?
Ist Heimat exklusiv?
Kann man Heimat riechen?
Ist Familie Heimat?
Muss man Heimat schützen – oder überwinden?
Questions that remain:
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Is home a place?
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Can home be lost?
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Can we have more than one home?
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Is home exclusive?
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Can you smell home?
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Is family home?
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Should home be protected—or transcended?
The exhibition of the same title was presented in spring 2024 at Galerie MarahArt in Bernau am Chiemsee and was accompanied by two public readings of my poetry.
The project was also presented in public space in Prien am Chiemsee as part of the Priener Kunstzeit festival and featured in the exhibition "Inner Home" at Migraart Project in Berlin.
The works do not seek to provide answers. Instead, they invite conversation—about belonging, identity, and what we choose to call home.
2026, Prien am Chiemsee,
Gedicht
Ich bin ein Tausendfüßler
an jedem Ort
den ich bewohnte
ein Fuß von mir
Ein Fuß für die Orte meiner Vormütter
und Vorväter
Ahnenfüße
So gehe ich
wackelig
auf meinen vielen Füßen
ein Viel-Ich
ein Überall-Ich
ein Nirgendwo-Ich
Nicola Heim 2022
I Am a Millipede
At every place
I have ever called home,
I left
one of my feet.
One foot
for the places
of my mothers
and fathers,
ancestral feet.
So I walk,
unsteady,
on my many feet—
a many selves,
an everywhere self,
a nowhere self.
Nicola Heim, 2022
2026, Foto: Karin Schneider Henn