The artist Mia Hochrein works with many different tools for her art. She decides in the creation process which creative tools she uses for her work. As a result, she creates photographs and also installations or performances.
When I stood in front of these two photographs, it was instantly clear to me that I would write about them. Why? Well, let’s start:
What do I see immediately? Two people wearing different textiles and always several of them. The textiles look like old towels, shirts, tablecloths or window curtains. In both pictures, the faces are covered. In my opinion, this gives the photographs anonymity and something mysterious.
Gender is also not directly interpretable. Is it the artist herself, or is it a woman and a man? The hands in the right picture seem a little more masculine, but the feet in the left picture seem more feminine. Perhaps this is too much stereotypical thinking. In the left photograph, the toes also point towards the wall. The rest of the body, however, appears as if the person is looking at me with his or her face. I start thinking and I have to find out what these photographs represent.
I take a look at the titles of the photographs. They are called “Strangers 1” and “Strangers 2”. The exhibition has the title “transformer” and the gallery manager Eva Hübner tells me that the textiles are garments. Clothes that were once worn by the artist’s mother and grandmother. Several generations are thus connected, quite inconspicuously. Thus the photos express the following for me: Even if some of them are no longer with us, we still carry them with us throughout our lives. They are a part of us.
Because of the anonymity, I can identify myself more easily with the basic idea. Do you?
The exhibition is on until 23 of march at Inselgalerie Berlin. Have a look!
