Hella Stoletzki

Indefinite the touch

25/08—06/10/24

 

The solo exhibition is the first museum show by Hella Stoletzki (born 1996), who was awarded the “Young Talents Art Prize of the State of Brandenburg” in 2023.

 

In addition to her work as an individual artist, Hella Stoletzki, who was socialized in Lusatia, is an active member of the kolektiw wakuum, a loose group of artists and cultural workers whose jointly conceived and organized activities aim to thread contemporary discourses of social and artistic-cultural action into Sorbian/Wendish traditions, but at the same time to question traditional ideas of Sorbian/Wendish identities.

 

Presenting exclusively paintings on canvas, paper or hardboard, the exhibition focuses on some of the artist’s core themes on the one hand, but on the other hand also shows motif- and content-related developments in her work in recent years.

 

The artist’s subjects are often closely linked to landscapes, people, questions about identity constructions, living conditions and ways of life in Lusatia: views of open-cast mining landscapes characterized by industrial energy production can be found in her pictures, as well as protagonists who are partially dressed in Sorbian costumes or traditional costume elements such as hoods in combination with youthful everyday clothing. In addition to the theme of clothing as a feature of identity, Stoletzki’s pictures contain numerous references and transfers of traditional Sorbian/Wendish image and ornamental motifs to the human body. These include fingernails designed using traditional Sorbian Easter egg decoration techniques, as well as tattoos of traditional costumed figures on forearms. Both interventions are actually carried out on the bodies of members of the community. Nevertheless, these acts also find their way into Stoletzki’s paintings by depicting the tattoo sessions. Thus, the human body is identified in two ways as a territory of identity and self-empowerment and provided with signs of community belonging – literally getting under the skin.

 

The rooms and landscapes in which the pictorial actions are situated are designed almost like a stage. With clear, figurative imagery that is, however, located beyond naturalistic concepts, Stoletzki’s works aim at an interface between reality and imagination.

 

Symbolically charged terrains that are located between the private and the public find a kind of extension in Hella Stoletzki’s pictures in the decidedly personal environment of apartments and houses, with houseplants as the epitome of tamed and cultivated “nature” often being important components of the interiors. In accordance with the art-historical reference system of the picture-in-picture principle in tattoo scenarios, Stoletzki’s paintings and graphics often show classical still lifes as arrangements on tables, shelves, etc. or integrate further image levels into the paintings in the form of pictures on walls, sketches on tables or floors.

 

The exhibition is a cooperation with the Lausitz Festival 2024.