photo by (c) Alena Schmick, April 2021
Martine Heuser's artistic practice develops from the imagination and the fictional, as well as the fascination for terminologies. Her anti-heroic engagement with places and absence manifests itself in a process-oriented »Körper-Schreiben« (body-writing), which leads to sculptural actions, actions of speech and to Audio-Monuments.
An anti-heroic approach to Sculpture, 2021
Martine Heuser evocates concepts like Der Tod der Skulptur or Nekropolis with a sculptural, performative and acoustic approach. One of her aims is to experience Sculpture by fictionally excavating her latent potentials from the eroded realms of the (Western-) history of art and to bring Sculpture into a place of vulnerability, in order to overcome her aesthetic-political body. She currently works on An anti-heroic approach to Sculpture, based on notions of the hero by Simone Weil - the hero being not merely strong, but also vulnerable. Weil experienced that force corrupts those who use it and those who suffer from it. Furthermore she believes that there is something sacred in every human being; this is impersonal and entails the good. The sacred is what may hold a person away from a personal desire for power and sovereignity, which has caused war, imperialism and injustice - and thus, the sculptural glorification and heroizing of these deeds. Sculpture must acknowledge her fundamental mortality and step into the void of the impersonal and the inhuman - where her vulnerability becomes her strength.