Leave your body like a Shell
is an underwater film and performative self-portrait by Johanna Keimeyer, exploring freedom and transformation. The body appears as a shell – a vessel carrying us through the world – while the spirit remains untethered, fluid, and boundless. Within the constraints of breath and gravity, a space opens where freedom can be imagined, felt, and lived.The film’s journey begins in a snowy winter landscape, where a pool gradually fills with snow. Out of this frozen stillness, a dress emerges – a symbol of the body’s shell. Soon after, the artist appears, moving with the dress through water and dreamlike spaces. Underwater, she shifts between states: sinking into the depths, rising into the vastness of the ocean, engaging in a silent dialogue with the dress. The imagery flows between limitation and expansiveness – the confinement of the pool and the infinite openness of the sea. In the final sequence, the artist is drawn backwards from the depths toward the surface – a liminal moment between dream and awakening, liberation and return.
Throughout the film, the artist wears pieces from Wolfgang Joop’s Wunderkind collection, ultimately leaving behind a single haute couture gown — a relic of the experience.
Artist Statement
“In my film, I explore freedom – the freedom of thought, of spirit. The body is merely a shell, a vehicle through which we move, yet it does not confine the mind. Though bound by physical limits, by breath and gravity, the spirit remains unbounded. I can choose what I think, what I feel, and where I imagine myself to be. Cold or warm, near or far – I am free from all circumstances, able to create and inhabit my own inner world:
Be free.”
Selected Exhibitions & Screenings
rk-Gallery at Ratskeller, Berlin
17 October 2025 – 7 April 2026
MONOPOL Berlin – Farbapparat 2,
Gallery Weekend Berlin, 24–26 April 2026
Please download the press release for further information:
