Surfing the Art - Christian's Biography

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Twenty years ago a boy named Christian Jorge Göllner was born in Hamburg on 26^th September, in Germany, to a German father and a Portuguese emigrant mother. There he spent half of his childhood along with this older brother Mário, who is 22 years-old now. At the time when he reached the age of seven his parents decided to divorce. Christian was very young to understand the consequences of a decision like this and reacted very calmly to what was going on. Soon afterwards, like a wave returning to embrace the sand, his mother returned to the country where she was born and took her children with her to start a new life. From then on, a new journey was awaiting him.

......... He moved with his mother and his brother first to Carcavelos and some time later to Parede, both on the west coast of Portugal, and currently he goes to Germany from time to time to stay with his father. Due to his move, he missed two years of his educational course. He attended two German Schools in Lisbon and completed the 9th grade at Escola da Madorna in Parede. It was during this time that his first passion was developed: a passion for Art. He attended high school at S.João do Estoril, where he started his Art studies.

Defining himself as a typical surfer, “a quiet and cool person”, Christian soon decided to pursue an Art career and continue to surf as a hobby. Although he had good marks in the specific subjects, his low results in the general ones couldn’t make this possible. In 2008 he tried to apply for a course in Design at the Faculdade de Arquitectura, in Lisbon and also for Communication Design at Faculdade de Belas Artes but he didn’t make it. He is now at the Universidade Nova of Lisbon studying Translation (English and German). I had the opportunity to see some of his drawings, which he likes to call “foolish stuff”, and it his quite sad to know that he couldn’t follow his Art studies.

Asked about the plans he had for the future, Christian told me that he always has solutions in his mind and he revealed that next year there is the possibility of leaving behind the Translation Course and taking up Information Technology, which can allow him to use his talent for the computer and still, of course, continue to surf.

Cátia Costa