During her 2015 residency at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, Christine Matzke explored the origins of the name 'Hollywood.' Her research into the original holly-covered landscape connects botanical, historical, and topographical perspectives, leading her to the former Wilcox family estate (1887) in the Hollywood Hills. Near the historic Bronson Cave, she discovered a single holly tree, that became the starting point of her artistic investigation. This location, steeped in cinematic history, is condensed through her drawings into a pictorial space where botanical discovery, cultural lore, and visual imagination intertwine.  

The project extends this connection to the Botanical Garden in Halle (Saale), where Matzke conducted research on the holly species.

Christine Matzke is an artist whose multifaceted work is situated at the intersection of time, memory, and history. She studied at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Her work focuses on voids, fractures, and undocumented periods of time. In the sense of an "archaeology of the present," she examines layers of memories and meanings, transforming them into precise artistic constellations where individual and collective spaces of memory overlap. Drawing is her central medium, functioning as a carrier of traces from condensed processes of visualization and translation. Her works have received numerous awards and grants. She is a lecturer at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle (Saale).

In 2015, Christine Matzke was a fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, in cooperation with the Saxony-Anhalt Arts Foundation.