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LAURA HORELLI
Judith Raum

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| Flash Art March – April 2012 BARBARA WEISS – BERLIN In her recent solo show, Berlin-based artist Laura Horelli stresses her approach to read social, political and economic relations through works grounded in the autobiographical. The video Haukka-Pala (A-Bit-to-Bite, 2009), deals with the artist’s mother’s early death and is accompanied by some of Horelli’s latest photographic and filmic work investigating her family’s life in Nairobi, Kenya, during her childhood. | | |  | | Laura Horell i, Terrace of European Single Person in Kile. Photographs on Alu-Dibondt. Courtesy Barbara Weiss, Berlin. | | | | | Horelli shares her struggle to remember someone close who passed away, based on footage of her mother appearing as a nutrition expert or children on Finnish television. Instead of showing the video in an installation context, as in the past, Horelli now merely stresses the origin of the footage as television, presenting the work on a monitor in one half of the gallery space while closing off the other half for a projection of her more cinematic work, The Terrace (2011). Here, we hear Horelli’s description of her family’s life in Nairobi during the late ’70s and early ’80s over footage shot in 2010. Calm, handheld views only let us see the outside of the modernist building, culminating with a view of the terrace. Photographs taken at the time by Horelli’s mother allow us to reconstruct the house’s interior as well as the interactions of family, neighbors and staff. Close-ups of the artist’s hands sorting through the photographs, combined with her voiceover that shifts between the perspective of the child and the adult who critically questions the depicted situations, suggest subjectivity as an almost inescapable prism for confronting reality. Six complementary framed photographs, titled Terrace of European Single Person in Kileleshwa (2011), only seemingly add an outside, neutral perspective. Next to a photograph of the artist as a kid are details from a book on modernist architecture in Nairobi, showing depictions and floor plans of the house. The author of the book turns out to have been a close friend of the artist’s mother. | | |  | | Laura Horelli, Haukka-pala / [A-Bit-to-Bite], 2009. 1 channel video installation, 4:3, format, 28:25 min., loop, color, sound. Courtesy Barbara Weiss, Berlin. | | | | | | | | | Subscription for 6 issues of Flash Art International Order a yearly subscription to Flash Art International as a gift. You may write a short message sending your best wishes to a friend or relative who will receive six issues of the most up-to-date and extensive coverage of global contemporary art. Buy it online | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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