elianna renner

frankfurt

Elian­na Renner’s artis­tic work deals with biogra­phies and his­to­ry. She engages with the ideas of com­mem­o­ra­tion, remem­brance, and for­get­ting. The focus is often on women, whose fate has been neglect­ed by his­to­ri­og­ra­phy. Using audio, text, sketch­es, pho­tog­ra­phy, film, and per­for­ma­tive ele­ments, Ren­ner tries to cap­ture bio­graph­i­cal traces of for­got­ten peo­ple and their stories.

“For me, home is and remains an exter­nal con­struct. If I am some­thing, then heymish – a feel­ing which prob­a­bly best describes being-at-home for me. And this feel­ing does not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be geo­graph­i­cal­ly locat­ed.” (Source)

As part of the home project, Elian­na Ren­ner explores home­less­ness and the feel­ing of being out of place and exclud­ed. The instal­la­tion con­sists of embroi­dery on used kitchen tow­els along with a video loop. The embroi­deries flirt with tra­di­tion­al hand­i­crafts. But instead of proverbs, the kitchen tow­els are adorned with Latin terms that refer to med­ical research by the psy­chi­a­trist and philoso­pher Karl Jaspers (1909) on home­sick­ness and crime. The video, Tru­di True, shows an idyl­lic moun­tain land­scape in which a per­son in a moun­tain cos­tume blows a trum­pet. Seem­ing­ly play­ful, the video instal­la­tion intri­cate­ly stitch­es fairy tales and bio­graph­i­cal tragedies togeth­er with expul­sion, flight, silence and homesickness.

eliannarenner.com

Foto: Elian­na Renner

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