Meric was sitting next to Ari, her friend, in the rooftop garden. She smiled when I asked her what she believes in. “I believe in female friendships. In love, in human relations. You find people who really, really understand you. I find this especially with my female friends”, she said. “I actually do not believe in life after death in the sense of reincarnation or some other dimension. But what I do believe is that the imprint of your relations to other people remains. The emotions, the feelings other people experience through you, those stay. This is what gives sense to life: Deep connections.” I could see how much this meant to Meric. She had a small tattoo on her right upper arm: “May I ask you something? What is your tattoo about?” – “This”, she said, “this is a sign consisting of a U and an A. These two letters stand for the place I am from, Untere Au. I combined them into this symbol. It was actually here where I experienced one of the profoundest connections in my life, with my sister. We used to meet up every day, to play, to share life.”

This imprint will last. The imprint of those relations, the richness, the happiness, can already be felt right now as she shares them with us – right now, here. She added that her childhood friend who she is still very close to actually also had that same tattoo!

Meric’s smallest shows us this symbol translated into the metaphorical golden thread woven from her life into the life of others. The background of her smallest is inspired by the under- and above-water-landscape of that particular landscape, the ‘Au’, meaning floodplain (meadow) of the beautiful landscape area she is from (Untere Au, German to English: Lower Floodplain/Meadow).