Installation “MY HOUSE, MY SKIN”

HAW DEPARTEMENT DESIGN AND HOUSE FOR ART AND CRAFTS IN HAMBURG 2013

This is my house, and yet not mine,
nor of those who lived here before.
They went out and I went in.
As will happen again when I die.

Inscription on a house facade.

First installation HAW 2011, My House, My Skin
Second Installation Haus für Kunst und Handwerk 2011

At a time when funds for cultural projects are being cut, the Mobile Art Space offers a compact, transportable exhibition space for artists. Housing temporary exhibitions and installations, the Mobile Art Space can be set up at any number of busy sites in Hamburg. Thanks to the Mobile Art Space, art can be made accessible to a wider public again. This lessens the difficulty that artists have in finding places to exhibit and museums will be able to close their doors with a clean conscience.

The first installation—My House, My Skin—dealt with the memories that are preserved in houses, like traces on the skin. The house stands for the human body, the soul and the self. Embroidered outlines represent people in various situations, with the perspective changing according to the meaning of the images. The whole fuses into a net of dark embroidered lines, to a text with different beginnings and ends that run simultaneously like different narratives within the art space. The facade inscription quoted above points to the transitoriness of the occupants in comparison with the duration of the house. Someone lived here before us, and others will live here after us. One shouldn’t take oneself too seriously.
Installations by other artists will be shown in the Mobile Art Space at other locations.

Materials: wood, cotton cloth, embroidery thread
Size: 120 cm x 120 cm x 200 cm

 

Anja Matzke, installation at the HAW, Dept. of Textile Design in July 2011 and September 2011, Haus für Kunst und Handwerk, Koppel 66, Hamburg