and has spent time in psychiatric hospitals. She has frequently undergone treatment for substance abuse. In a 2016 interview, she said that her alcohol problems began after her divorce and that she had been sober since 2013.

Genzken has worked in studios in Düsseldorf, Cologne (designed in 1993 by architect Frank Tebroke); for short stretches in the United States, in Lower Manhattan and Hoboken, New Jersey;