Exploring the complexity of the multiple strata in a territory, Katrin Ströbel proposes a critical and intersectional new reading of our daily environment.

Her work grows roots in queer, feminist and post-colonialist theories, and reveals the systemic domination of bodies in their relationship to the urban space. She mixes photography, performances and in-situ installations, but for all project, the act of drawing is the original genesis : intimate and solitary act of creation, as well as a tool for research and reflection, the graphical gesture allows her to experience a physical embodiment of her subjects. The reinterpretation of photographic archives, the shifting games of power balance and their recontextualization emphasize the permanent subjectivity of our perceptions. Then, the familiar norm unveils its oversight mechanism.

“Becoming sculpture. Undoing sculpture.

There was a time when people were supposed to become sculptures. Bodies didn’t move, hands didn’t touch, skins didn’t meet. Spines got stiff, hearts got heavy. Most people were not very good at being sculptures. The birds were laughing about them. The rats were laughing, too. Still, if you had a closer look, you would discover tiny cracks on the crusted skins, you would discover magma lines of love, rage, loneliness, anger, empathy, suffering, frustration, solidarity, fear, resistance. You would see the tiny rivers of lava in the dark windows of your neighbours at night. The effusive eruption of a woman, crying in the street. You could feel it floating through bodies while queing up in front of a supermarket. Almost invisible. A twitchy finger on your right hand. A twitchy eye lid. A twitchy mind.”

Katrin Ströbel, 2020

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Katrin Ströbel (*1975) lives and works in Marseille (FR), Stuttgart (DE) and Rabat (MA). Her drawings, sitespecific works and installations are based on a critical questioning of social, cultural, and geopolitical conditions that define our everyday life. With a criticalironic view, the artist deconstructs gender relations and female stereotypes in various drawings and collages. Since 2004, the artist has worked regularly in Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Peru, Australia, and the United States. Katrin Ströbel studied visual art and literature. She holds a PhD in art history. She is a mother. Since 2013 she teaches as professor at the Villa Arson, École nationale supérieure d’art Nice, France.

(From the Making love to unknown cities, catalogue, with texts by Julie Crenn, Iris Dressler, Sophie Orlando and Dorit Schäfer, DISTANZ, Berlin, 2020)

katrin-stroebel.de

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Jot Fau

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«  Talking about time. A past time parallel to mine. The one who belongs to others, to the walls, to the curtains. I discover it among the materials that my body recognizes and my fingers understand. Weaving a common and metaphysical territory that connects this multiplicity of pasts. Building a story by recomposing pieces of fabrics and objects filled with histories and time (…) »

Digging through sediments of past, possible, in becoming or unfinished existences, the work of Jot Fau thrives in textile materials. Leather moult, wool and silk fortress, velvet armor, her pieces are ageless territories. Born in Belgium in 1987, Jot Fau graduated with a Masters of Marseille’s Fine Art school in 2012

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