Berlin and Hiroshima-based artist Juno Ilkun creates a riso-printed illustrated report about a real former West German diplomat, juxtaposing his valuable art collection with his recorded opinions to examine the failed de-Nazification of West Germany and the question of who the country sent to represent it abroad.
The inspiration was personal. Juno Ilkun had a connection to this diplomat, a former West German official stationed in the United States for nine years, before eventually cutting ties. The zine was his last attempt to voice the absurdity of that relationship, and to make visible something he believes can no longer be looked away from. “I believe it’s important to look directly at the rhetoric being spread,” he says. “To see what these people believe in order to be able to fight against them. We can no longer look away and pretend it’s not happening.”
In forty-five Years Around the World places digital illustrations of the diplomat’s objects, landscapes and possessions alongside the things he actually says. The juxtaposition is the argument: valuable pieces of art, Christian statues, the trappings of a cultured, well-travelled life, set next to recorded opinions that make the careful de-Nazification narrative of postwar West Germany difficult to sustain.
“I remember when my class first read a line that said ‘I’m a racist, but I like young Indians’,” Ilkun says. “Everyone gasped or nervously laughed. It was surprising to me that people don’t seem to hear these things a lot, considering I was unfortunately exposed to it all my life.”
The zine was made during Ilkun’s seventh semester at Hochschule Hannover, under the guidance of comic artist Ulli Lust. It is riso-printed in fluorescent pink and brown on yellow paper, with smaller sections in hunter green on green paper, bound and printed by Ilkun himself at university in a first edition. The format is intimate and the colour choices deliberately vivid, making the material feel urgent rather than archival.
The question at the centre of the project, who are the people representing Germany, is not rhetorical. It is directed at a specific history of institutional continuity, of people with subtly unreconstructed views holding positions of diplomatic authority, and at the ongoing relevance of that history in the present.
Juno Ilkun is an artist born in Berlin, currently based in Hiroshima, Japan, studying at Hochschule Hannover. His practice responds to the concerns of a new generation through colour, dynamic composition and a focus on identity and queer culture.
Website: intrydr.de Instagram: @intrydr
In forty-five Years Around the World, 2026. Risograph print, fluorescent pink and brown on 120gsm yellow paper; hunter green on green paper. First edition. Bound and printed by the artist at Hochschule Hannover. Mentored by Ulli Lust.
