Dust in Strange Light: Lena Rosa Händle

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Tattoo Series

Dust in Strange Light: Lena Rosa Händle
Curated by John Kenneth Paranada

Opening: September 5, 2019 at 7pm
Artist Talk: September 5, 2019 at 7:30pm
Exhibition duration: September 5 – 15, 2019

What is an important image in the age of digital consciousness? How do we filter them out? And ultimately, how do we derive meaning from the stages, frames and displays through which the contemporary image appears?

This exhibition is about things seen and unseen and the presence of absence. Lena Rosa Händle shines a light on the historically erased and forgotten images of abjected queerness. Digging through her photographic archives, Händle unearths past images that she has never shown before, juxtaposing them with her ongoing series “I (We) Feel Seen” 2018, “Places of Passing” 2013 and “Laughing Inverts” 2016 - and through this process weaving a cacophony of the diverse complexity of queerness and the politics of colour. Surveying the past years of Händle’s work, this conscious retrospective traces several significant strands of the artists’ practice. Händle inventively explores the ways in which colonialism and patriarchy continue to shape how Western societies refuse to hear, see and feel the plight of queer-feminist, trans and gender non-binary persons in her works. Over the last ten years, Händle has developed a dynamic and thought-provoking inquiry into the notion of capturing queer solidarities. At its heart, lies a passionate critique of modern Western systems of control and organisation and the growing power of right-wing populism around the globe. Händle’s photographic eye is unmistakable: the archive of her highly disarming, beautifully shot images are a haystack of revelations – each shot a little different but disciplined in their similarity. The photographs summons intense and consistent moods that evoke as if the images appear to be hypnotised by spirit; it is energetic and intriguing to the point where it’s like seeing the forest in its entirety and also seeing the trees all at once.

This exhibition addresses some of the crucial concerns of our time; normalised micro-aggressions, intersectionality, trans-rights, queer activism and love. It looks to engage the audience through our shared capacities for thinking and feeling. Through her sensitive approach, Händle invites us to approach her subject matter with a thoughtful examination and critical insight.

This complex and layered selection of her archive is testament to the ingenuity of her photographic eye and honest treatment of her subject, bringing to the fore how filtering important images is only possible through a dialogue of representation, subtlety, and abstraction; emancipating the frozen image of patriarchal social construction and revealing the ability of art to capture the monsters that dwell in the contemporary. Every important image must be made real – not merely exposed and shed light, to close the border, but as a reality of crossing, of recognising and witnessing the Dust In Strange Light.

Artist Bio:

The work of Lena Rosa Händle, which is constituted across photographs, installations, collages and objects, portrays a vast openness in light of an intense focus on people in their social and personal realities as well as their visibilities and cultural codes. Often comprising of multi-part installations, they create a complex tableaux and visual imagination closely connected to the social reality of their subjects; they postulate society’s blueprints dealing critically with contemporary and historical societies and practices, towards a search for utopian potentials.

Lena Rosa Händle was born in Berlin and studied artistic photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig (Diploma, 2011; Master/Meisterschülerin, 2013) and at the Facultat de Belles Arts, Barcelona. She was University Assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2013-2017).
She is distinguished with several scholarships (among others of the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria, Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation, Cultural Foundation of the free State of Saxony), Residencies (New York City, 2017; London 2020 both from the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria) and Fundings (among others Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria, Society of Friends of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and her work is part of the Public Art Collection, Dresden, the Public Art Collection of the City of Vienna (MA7), the Collection of the Gay Museum in Berlin and the KUNST HAUS in Vienna.

about the exhibition format “Tattoo Series”
In 2015, Christoph Srb and me (Reinhold Zisser) founded an artist run space in Seidlgasse 14, 1030 Vienna. The name of the space □□□□□■ (also written LLLLLL) was created from the light boxes which are attached to the exterior facade.
In 2018 i started an artistic project in which i used our artist run space as material for a conceptual artwork, by showing off the room at Parallelvienna, tranfering these light boxes as a central element of a room installation to the fair. The following offer was made there: Each artist, each curator, who has the symbol, the name of the space □□□□□■ tattooed, will receive a solo exhibition in 2019. Altogether, 23 people were tattooed during the six days of the fair.
The second phase of the action, the realization of the exhibitions began in the Space at Seidlgasse in Wien 1030 this March.

The resulting shows investigate the network of positions and their mutual inscriptions that emerged at the fair, presenting them itself and thus making these abstract relationships visible. Opposite to the body of this group exhibition created by the presence of artists who got themself tattooed to be part of, is the body of the □□□□□■ exhibition space where the whole action takes part.
While at the beginning of the project the artist run space □□□□□■ was the vehicle for the observations of the dependencies and abysses of the art institution / market / artist into an exhibition context, the now running exhibition series show that the □□□□□■ space acted as an artistic instrument. The reflection and presentation of the relationships between artists and institution has been a central element of my work for many years and therefore also became a central element of the □□□□□■ space. Therein I understand curatorial action and the system of art institution as a material to generate artistic work. You can slip like a hermit crab into more and more new forms and Ieave then leave again. This parasitic strategy is also evident in this exhibition series. But it also becomes clear that this parasitic relationship is a mutual one in which the resulting inscriptions are permanent and interact.