Teufelsberg is a photographic exploration of the contemporary “archaeological remains” emerging from the surface of Teufelsberg mountain in Berlin. Teufelsberg, a 120-meter-high artificial hill, was created between 1950 and 1972 by Berlin's population, using approximately 75 million cubic meters of rubble from the bombed-out city.

Today, fragments of everyday objects—plates, tiles, and glass—are emerging from the mountain’s surface. These artifacts bear visible traces of their origins, each embodying a distinct history of time and place. Within the forest that now covers the hill, they appear as foreign intrusions, standing out as objects that unapologetically reveal their form and method of production. These fragments contrast with the surrounding earth, evoking the primal gesture of raising a stone from the ground—a moment akin to the creation of the first sculpture.

What captivates us in this phenomenon is not the utility or historical narrative of the mountain, nor its collective significance, but the way these fragments exist independently of such contexts. Their presence resists reduction to a story or purpose and instead asserts itself as something that disregards our gaze, our stories, and the interpretations we impose upon them.

Teufelsberg is both the physical result of the accumulation of rubble from Berlin’s destruction during World War II and the symbolic burial of another story: the unfulfilled project of the world’s largest military academy, designed by Albert Speer under Hitler’s direction. At the top of Teufelsberg stand the remnants of a former U.S. listening station, built during the Cold War to intercept Soviet and East German communications. This building is now a decaying remnant of past geopolitical tensions, covered in graffiti.