I was in Berlin for an art residency when my parents decided my studio was more useful as funding for my brother’s startup than as the place I had built my life. When I came home to Chicago, scaffolding covered the building, workers were carrying pieces of my walls outside, and my mother stood on the sidewalk like she had done me a favor. “You can paint anywhere,” she said. I smiled, and they mocked me for it—until I asked one quiet question about the paperwork they never bothered to read.

In Berlin, the light is different. It is a bruised, cinematic grey that hangs over the Spree River, filtering into