Claudia Holzinger
I never wanted to be a sex symbol
series of 5 photographs, 168 x 101 cm each

Friday, June 18, 2021
5 – 9 pm

With sunburnt skin and a massive hangover I was sitting in front of my sister’s TV in Munich and zapping channels when I got stuck on one, seeing something I defined as the opening credits of a new show or movie.
So this is me about to watch the documentary „I am Patrick Swayze“.
When I was young, I was always embarrassed when I watched his films. They were so cheesy, so sappy and so drippingly romantic in the most superficial sense, that I could only look at many scenes holding my hand in front of my face, blinking lightly through my fingers.
Little did I know that Patrick Swayze sometimes felt like this about his movies, too, but never had the freedom to hide his face behind his hands.
„I hadn’t been studying all my life to throw it down the drain by becoming a face, the very thing I was scared I was, anyway. A face in tight blue jeans. I was willing to bank on that by enough connection with myself and the truth in me that I could become an actor to be reckoned with, an actor with respect and not a personality.“

Claudia Holzinger lives and works in Nürnberg, Germany. She is one half of the artist duo SÜSSHOLZ together with Sophia Süssmilch since 2020, and collaborates with Lilly Urbat as HOLZINGERurbat since 2016.
Holzinger works intuitively and between disciplines to create expansive installations, in which photography always tells the main narrative. She defines humour as an important means of creating access to a deeper truth in her work. Through radical introspection, the artist discusses body politics, personal and collective memory, desired identity, fan culture, moral hygiene, strategies of patriarchy or the dangers of positive prejudices.
Claudia’s work has been published in Magazines such as SYSTEM, ISIT, GUT, AISHTI Salamé, COEVAL and ZEIT Campus.
Her participation in group exhibitions comprises the CFA Berlin, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, the Kunstpalais Erlangen, the Galerie 207 Prague, Spazio in Situ Rome and the Kyrgyz National Museum Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan amongst others.

school insideout is a new series in which school acts the role of a lightbox, connecting the space to the outside.