Christina Laube and Mehrdad Zaeri storytellers, each with their own way. She uses words, photographs and paintings, while he works with drawings and illustrations. Together, as the Duo Sourati, they create delicate, unpretentious works full of emotion. These can be found on beer mats or on the walls of buildings all over the world.
1943–Anna, a young Ukrainian forced labourer, works in the fields around the village, in which Helga has sought refuge with her mother to escape the bombs in their hometown. Anna and Helga become friends and dance together through dark times. Until Anna died in an air raid. A girl whose life left no traces. Neither in her homeland nor in Germany. Who only continues to exist in memories. In Helga’s memories.
Christina Laube and Mehrdad Zaeri have turned Helga’s memory of Anna into a graphic novel.
There is Elfriede, 17 years old. Who finds refuge with her family in the Ochsenpferchbunker air-raid shelter in the Mannheim district of Neckarstadt-West. And who brings tea to the soldiers who are on guard. She talks to one of them for a little longer. They laugh and flirt with each other—until planes flew overhead. Elfriede managed to get to safety, but the young soldier died. She never knew his name, but still remembers his eyes. And she has done so for over 80 years.
The artist duo standing in front of the mural that shows the unknown soldier…
Christina Laube and Mehrdad Zaeri have preserved both stories. The memory of Anna as remembered by Helga Neumeyer from Frankenthal was published in a graphic novel in 2024. Elfriede’s encounter with the young soldier was illustrated on concrete walls inside the same bunker where she found shelter back then. The bunker hosts the MARCHIVUM and safeguards some of the history of the city of Mannheim. The soldier is standing there on a landing, looking down the stairway, at Elfriede, who is now white-haired and holds a teapot in her hand.
… taking a look into the past together.
Christina and Mehrdad have been working as the Duo Sourati since 2016; “at least officially,” says Christina. They have been working together ever since they became a couple. “We have always exchanged ideas about our art and advised each other,” she adds. “I could never keep my mouth shut when I watched him draw.” Mehrdad agrees: “She would say, ‘it needs some red!’ And I’m shocked thinking, ‘she’s right!’” And since his wife often finds it difficult to make decisions, he often advises her on the selection of images.
Christina and Mehrdad found each other through their shared love of picture books.
Today, they are creators themselves.
And they also tell stories on the walls of buildings…
… like here in the MARCHIVUM.
They worked on the project for months. Photo: MARCHIVUM/Kathrin Schwab
Some of their works fit on a beer mat…
… some are the size of a building. Photo: STADT.WAND.KUNST/Daniel Keil
The artist duo complement each other perfectly. Photo: STADT.WAND.KUNST/Alexander Krziwanie
Photo: STADT.WAND.KUNST/Daniel Keil
The Freiheitstesterin mural kicked off their public engagements as a duo. It was back in 2016 that a team from the Alte Feuerwache cultural centre in Mannheim asked Mehrdad if he was interested in designing a façade for the Stadt.Wand.Kunst project. He wasn’t. The task seemed giant, the thought of designing an entire wall of a building too daunting. “And I had never even sprayed graffiti in my life!” But when he told his wife about the request, she was immediately enthusiastic. “Let’s do it together,” she suggested. They only had one condition: They wanted to paint on a wall that would disappear later. “We didn’t want to be ashamed of the wall for the rest of our lives if it went wrong.” But the Freiheitstesterin mural with its birds proved to be an extremely successful test, and it was hard to say goodbye, when the building in block B6 was actually torn down two years later.
I really enjoyed the work at the MARCHIVUM. Delving so deeply into the memory of a city was a wonderful experience.
Christina Laube
Some of the birds managed to escape the painting and now point the way across façades from block B6 to block H5. This is where the couple, then officially known as the Duo Sourati, designed their second wall. It is called Abschied und Neubeginn (farewell and new beginning) and shows a woman with a suitcase in her hand, a cat on her head and a tree in her rucksack—ready to put down new roots far away from their home. “We painted it for all migrants living in the city; and for all the people, who want to start a new life at the Central Institute of Mental Health located behind it,” Mehrdad explains.
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Farewell and new beginning: the creation of the mural at block H5 in Mannheim. Film by Stadt.Wand.Kunst.
He knows what it feels like to be uprooted. He fled Iran with his family at the age of 14. His parents supported the revolution in their country at the time—firmly believing in democracy. But when the Iranian revolution finally resulted in an Islamic theocracy, they left the country. The fact that the family ended up in Heidelberg was “pure coincidence, but a very happy one”. Art gave him a sense of purpose. “I didn’t know the language, but I knew how to draw.” And his classmates noticed that too. He started by sketching portraits of their favourite stars. Later he turned his passion into a career. He sketched his new roots, so to speak. The old ones are still remembered by the name they gave themselves as a duo. Sourati means dusky pink in Persian. The blossoms of the tree on the otherwise grey wall of the building located on block H5 glow in this colour.
The poppies symbolise hope in dark times—a recurring motif in Mehrdad’s work.
Numerous new walls have been sprayed with their works since then; in Mannheim, but also in other cities. Christina and Mehrdad drew a Minotaur on the wall of the Günter-Grass-Haus museum in Lübeck, a whale-shaped zeppelin floating on the wall of a car park in Rosenheim and a woman with a fluttering swarm of dreams above her head on a wall in Jordan. New projects were added soon: such as Marthas Reise (Martha’s journey), a poetic picture book with laser cuts (a modern paper cutting technique), or Dedicated to Tati, a graphic room installation exhibited in the Kunsthalle art gallery in Göppingen. Tati is a friend of the couple and lives in Ukraine. Christina and Mehrdad have used the text messages she sent to Mannheim since Russia’s attack on her homeland to label an entire room, a shelf, a table, a chair. Countless faces are drawn on the floor and countless tanks drawn on the ceiling.
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War in a room: Dedicated to Tati is a film by Hagen Betzwieser, Kunsthalle Göppingen art gallery.
“Mehrdad usually comes up with the ideas,” says Christina and explains that it’s her job to execute them and follow through on them. The same goes for tracking down stories. While Mehrdad is already thinking about the next picture or the next project, she enjoys immersing herself in research. She spent a lot of time in the archives when they were commissioned to design the stairwell of the MARCHIVUM. “I really enjoyed the work at the MARCHIVUM. Delving so deeply into the memory of a city was a wonderful experience. Often sad and distressing, it was, however, incredibly rewarding to bring the stories to light.”
The story about Jakob Faulhaber as captured on the bunker walls by the artist duo. His activities during the communist resistance landed him in prison in 1942.
They complement each other. Mehrdad likes to be spontaneous. Christina likes to plan. He needs just a few lines to draw emotional worlds into faces. She manages to say everything with just a few words. They met in Heidelberg. Christina, who grew up in the Black Forest, moved to the city for her first job as a photographer “and stayed for good”. They were united by their shared love of picture books right in the beginning. “We often met and looked at books—slowly and silently,” says Christina. Initially as friends, until one day Mehrdad told her that he would soon be getting married. “To whom?” she asked. “To you,” he answered.
Neither of them find it complicated that they are very different, “because we both always find the same beautiful things beautiful.”
Their joint works are also silent, even when they are the size of a building. And they always tell and preserve stories. It was Helga Neumeyer’s wish that Anna live on in a book. The local from Frankenthal wanted to create something lasting, proof that this girl existed. “She had to wait five years for the book to be published,” says Christina. How relieved the 80-year-old woman was when she finally held it in her hands so that Anna could become part of the memory of all the people who read it!
Saved from oblivion: Anna’s story.
Elfriede Eisenbeiser, now almost 100 years old, also came to the inauguration of her mural in the MARCHIVUM. She had a dear wish: “She wanted to see the soldier,” says Mehrdad. They carried the woman down the stairs in her wheelchair, right up to him. “When she was sitting in front of him, it became completely silent in the stairwell.”
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