Erika Kassnel-Henneberg

The project consists of two pieces of artwork – a book and a collection of letters. The piece Heimat is Somewhere Else focuses on an obsessive search for a place of identification and belonging. I describe it as a long car ride without arrival because every apparent arrival makes you painfully aware, that “heimat” isn’t where you searched for it. The piece Letters from Utopia is a pass point to a place, which only exists in mind. Once this place was real, but memory shaped it into something unreal, an idealized location of longing – a very personal Utopia. My belief is that the desire for Utopia is in man’s nature. On the other hand it is contrary to nature to ever accomplish this intention. This deeply human experience is a painful and at the same time motivating feeling. In this area of conflict I am interested in man’s subjective sensations and the capability to forget, to remember and to associate.

Erika Kassnel-Henneberg was born in Timişoara, Romania but lives and works in Germany. In her collages she combines different techniques and materials. By mixing her own photographs with historical pictures Kassnel-Henneberg makes it hard to distinguish the old from the new. The present melts into the past and reality into fiction.

Work

The Lost-Home-Project, book object and collage

Location

Luleå, Rovaniemi