Layla Xing

Layla Xing, whose real name is Lena Ortmann, is a Cologne artist who came out of street art. She works in glazes, layering thin films of colour to achieve both transparency and depth, and often favours a near-monochrome range: a choice she describes as a way of focusing attention on the depicted face alone, on its emotion and character. On the Ehrenfeld railway embankment she painted, together with Huami, a wall of Indian-inspired patterns and figures including "Der alte Mann", and she also produced a portrait of Paul Schneider, the "preacher of Buchenwald", on a wall of the Regional Church House in Düsseldorf.