'Checkpoint', 40 x 40 cm, oil on canvas, 2014

Not knowing how to drive and not knowing anyone who could led to the creation of a whole series of paintings. 

I made this painting three years ago, in a different town, while living a completely different life. 

I just came to Germany, to Freiburg, several months before with a small suitcase. Most of my things were in storage at a friend's place in Zurich. Fortunately, at the time I had received a commission for three paintings and it was just enough, so I could concentrate on painting and moving. I moved my things slowly, riding the bus or a local train back and forth on the weekends, about two hours one way. 

The bus ride was the cheapest option. It ran along the border between Germany and France. Blackforest on one side, the flat Rhine valley on the other, towards Switzerland and into the beginning of the Alps.

The bus was often stopped at the border, the passports checked and once in a while the boarder control officers took one or two passengers off the bus. 

Sometimes on the Swiss border, sometimes on the German. The whole experience had a very strange, surreal and silencing effect. 

It also made me wonder and doubt the whole image of the pro-freedom and equality propagated by the most western societies. 

Why should a color of one's passport or a country of origin, decide where one is or isn't allowed to go? 

At the same time the birds just flew over the border and nobody could stop them, telling them they are the wrong species :) and not wanted here or there. 

Exclusion never led to anything good.

What do you think? Have you ever been denied entry anywhere?