Art In Public Space
ART IN PUBLIC SPACE: NOTHING STAYS THE SAME When we think about art in public space, England has seen some turbulent times the last couple of years. Recently, we have gone through protests, debates, and some removals of statues that had been quietly hiding in public view for years. The topics that [...]
MISDIRECTION
MISDIRECTION: DESIRE OF WONDER This video records a conversation which took place in Leiden in 2018. A magician, a rabbi, an art historian and a curator sat around a table to discuss their take on 'wonder'. And what do a magician, a rabbi and a curator have in common? One answer is, they [...]
The Magic of Projection
DE MAGIE VAN DE PROJECTIE HET SYMPOSIUM De opname documenteert een symposium gehouden op 19 Oktober 2018 in Leiden. Het doel van het symposium was het interpreteren van Rembrandts schilderij "Het feestmaal van Belsazar” wat her verhaal van Daniel verbeeld (het teken aan de muur). Het gesprek is onderdeel [...]
The Magic of Projection
THE MAGIC OF PROJECTION: FILMINSTALLATION Museum De Lakenhal has a unique collection of magic lanterns and magic lantern slides. In the ‘Magic Room’ the visitor can see highlights of that collection as well as a film installation. The installation presents scenes [...]
Paradise Lost
PARADISE LOST Paradise Lost is part of the HOME Project. HOME was realised with the support of: the Netherlands Foundation of Visual Arts, Design and Architecture Sharjah Art Foundation Green Cardamom, London.
The Silent Empress
SILENT EMPRESS The work Silent Empress made the Empress of India, Queen Victoria, speak. A sound- tag was attached to the statue of Queen Victoria in the city centre of in Wakefeld, England. The work questioned the undiscerning culture of remembrance of European colonial history, for which the [...]
Reporting to the Landscape
REPORTING TO THE LANDSCAPE Reporting to the Landscape was an intervention in public space. Several sound tags were attached to the sculpture group the Family of Man (1970) by Barbara Hepworth. These tags played interviews with refugees from Africa and the Middle East. These new [...]
HOME project
HOME How can I reclaim a memory, where objects are lost and access to places is denied? Remembering is not a purely cognitive process, because our body can trigger memories when we make a gesture, move across a space or touch an object. The HOME-project is a collection of [...]
Presence of an Absence
PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE Sophie Ernst collaborated with Taha Mehmood on an investigation into the relationship between objects, experiences and identity. For their installation Ernst and Mehmood travelled to Indonesia. The colonial encounter between Europe and Asia left thousands of stories in its wake. [...]
Presence of an Absence
PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE In conversation with different guests Ernst and Mehmood investigated the ways in which historical and contemporary social realities are shaped in Europe and Asia. The following topics were discussed: the role played by stories in the making of memory, identity and culture, colonial stories in [...]
No place like America
NO PLACE LIKE AMERICA The title of the work quotes Peter Bichsel‘s children‘s story Amerika gibt es nicht. The work consists of documentary video portraits of young men. These clips are projected onto an uneven ‚screen‘ of stacked cardboard boxes. The portraits were made [...]
Dying Gauls
DYING GAULS The work Dying Gauls combines sculptures of classical enemies with contemporary media images. Plaster casts of Dying Gauls become the canvas for documentary video images of young Madrassa students from Pakistan. The young bearded men talk about their ideas of death, paradise and hell. In contrast [...]
Jannat
Jannat Jannat – literally paradise – is a promise and a fantasy. In the video installation, Jannat becomes a dark invitation. The work refers to the paintings on the backs of the Rikshaws in Lahore, Pakistan. Oversized letters serve as projection screen. In the Indian press, Jannat was described [...]
Face Off
FACE OFF The work comprised of a back-projection onto a translucent mirror surface. The projection work adresses ‘the gaze’ and self-image. As a spectator, we see our own reflection in the mirror overlain onto the projected image of a woman (the artist). The mutual view is interrupted by a [...]
True Love
TRUE LOVE The photographic work deals with the male gaze and the image of women in public space in Pakistan. The light boxes are made in letter form. They show cinema advertisement for Lollywood films. In Pakistan the larger-than-life billboards are still hand-painted in the cinema-district of Lahore and [...]
Lovedolls
LOVEDOLLS The exhibition Lovedolls was Sophie Ernst's first major solo exhibition in Germany. The show opened at the Museums für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke in Munich. The exhibition showed projections on plaster casts of classical sculptures. An adapted form of the exhibition traveled to the Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik, Berlin. [...]
El Pelele
EL PELELE Karachi, Pakistan, 2003. The video work deals with the relationship between women and men in a patriarchal society. The video is quoting the painting El pelele by Francisco de Goya. It was created 1791/1792 and shows a game in which a male doll is thrown by four [...]
Lovedolls
LOVEDOLLS Backlit 3D photo collages.
Victory
VICTORY Video augmentation of the Nike of Samothrake 4:20 Min. Lahore, 2004
Apollo
APOLLO Video augmentation onto the statue of Apollo Pourtales 28:00 Min. Friedersdorf, 2003
Black Venus
BLACK VENUS Augmentation of the statue of Venus Medici. 8:22 min. Rotterdam, 2004