Fotoeins Fotografie

Above/featured: Alicja Kwade exhibition, at the Berlinische Galerie. HL:X70.

In mid-2021, the world slowly climbs out of the worst of the pandemic. Later that autumn, I watch DW Culture’s Arts.21 feature on Polish-German artist Alicja Kwade whose work strikes a personal resonance. I have to go see her work and exhibition in person, but would it even be possible? My answer arrives six weeks later with a quick jump home to Berlin.

All of Kwade’s sculptural pieces in her exhibition, “In Abwesenheit” (In Absence)”, are “self-portraits.” But none of them show her face; the pieces aren’t necessarily simple, nor are they “selfies” characterized by the present vernacular. She is not physically present, and yet, every piece provides the visitor a glimpse into her mindset including questions she raises about the volatility of the human condition and about where we fit within a very large universe.

As former scientist, I love and recognize the influences on her art. She is clearly very interested in mathematics, physics, astrophysics, biology, genetics; but she’d be the first to admit she’d need multiple lives to completely fulfill all of her interests. The deconstruction of “self” into precise scientific elements is another way of expressing those (dreaded) “selfies” or self-portraits. I admire the clever play: it’s the breakdown into those elements that tell us what she is, and it’s the measured synthesis of those elements into the broad strokes of her sculptures that tell us who she is.

We’re all playing this game. Everyday things seem so important. But then you zoom out and realize that you’re standing with another billion [people] on a spinning sphere. With that perspective, you’re reminded to just be glad you’re here at all.

– Alicia Kwade about her rooftop commission at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art: Artnet News, 16 April 2019.

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