I have already been detaching myself from the actuality of built space and am now working towards bodily spaces while still being fascinated by notions of exposing and locking up.
Since 2024, I have been focusing on the idea of hiding and revealing, honesty and façade, human secrets and hidden longings. The female body and the intimate (Jullien’s “De l’intime”) are starting points of my current project Bond/Trace. Drawing on philosophical texts by Hannah Arendt, François Jullien, and Henri Foucault as well as on literary texts by Anaïs Nin, Marguerite Duras, and Pablo Neruda, I am exploring the female body as a seismograph and secret indicator of connectedness. I am fascinated by–as Foucault puts it in “Les hétérotopies, le corps utopique”–the way a body gains presence and comes alive by being touched by an other.
Currently, these are pencil and watercolor on paper in different sizes.
Some will become prints and I plan to create an artists’ book.
photos of the works and VCCA 2024 residency studio view: Christina Kirchinger