GALLERY ONE asked artist Kathrin Longhurst a few key questions about her 2025 November solo exhibition ‘The Coldest War’ which feels like her most personally connected body of work to date. We are thrilled to showcase her striking talent and give GALLERY ONE clients the opportunity to collect such thought provoking and poignant works of art.
Q: Your work often weaves together personal history and broader socio-political themes. What was the spark that led you to create The Coldest War, and how does it connect to your own story?
KL: The Coldest War grew out of watching today’s political landscape shift back toward the same kind of ideological division and mistrust I remember from my childhood in East Germany. The majority of works were created during an art residency in Canada, that allowed me to intensely focus on research and gave me time to deep dive into books and reading. I read “Beyond the Wall” by historian Katja Hoyer between painting sessions and kept returning to the way that propaganda images and slogans shaped how people thought and behaved. When I see similar patterns of manipulation and polarisation emerging today around the world, it feels hauntingly familiar. This body of work became a way for me to process that déjà vu and to examine how fear and loyalty are manufactured, both then and now.
Q: The title of the exhibition and individual artworks suggests tension and fragility. What does “the coldest war” represent to you in today’s cultural or political climate?
KL: To me, The Coldest War is about the invisible wars we’re fighting today. I recently discussed the doomsday clock with a friend and how it was set to 5 minutes to midnight during the “original” Cold War but now it has moved even closer to about 89 seconds to midnight. As the clock is getting closer to obliteration that war gets colder. We battle misinformation, the war of ideologies, climate wars, internet hacking wars, and the keyboard wars that play out in our media feeds and public discourse. It’s a climate where truth feels negotiable, and emotional manipulation replaces open dialogue. To me that psychological chill, the erosion of trust between people, feels like the coldest war of all.
Q: You’re known for your powerful, often female-led portraits. How do the figures in this new body of work embody resilience or resistance?
KL: The women I paint are not passive subjects; they return the gaze. They stand for agency, for the quiet defiance of being seen on their own terms. My paintings reclaim space. These figures embody strength through self-possession. They don’t perform power, they inhabit it.
Q: How did your artistic process for this exhibition differ from past projects, whether in palette, scale, or emotional intensity?
KL: This series feels more introspective than my previous work. I drew more consciously from memory, recalling textures, wallpapers, and fabrics from my childhood homes in East Berlin as well as early influences of Soviet culture which was our closest ally in East Germany. The palette leans into colder tones, steely blues, greys, and reds, that evoke both propaganda posters and the psychological chill of surveillance culture. Conceptually, it’s my most personal work since Indoctrinated, but perhaps more layered, less about anger, more about reflection.
Q: What do you hope the Gallery One audience will take away from The Coldest War, and how do you see art playing a role in opening dialogue about memory, identity, and conflict?
KL: I hope viewers feel both the beauty and unease in these works, the tension between the superficial surface and the deeper backstory. Art has a unique way of engaging empathetically: it lets us feel history rather than just read about it. If my paintings can spark reflection about how ideology seeps into our private lives, or how women in particular, navigate those pressures, then I feel I’ve contributed something meaningful. Memory and conflict are cyclical, but art gives us the language to recognise the patterns.
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