Lost in translation

24.01.2011

In January 2001 the German artist Nadja Marcin (born 1980, lives and works in New York) was our guest in the Deutsche Börse Residency Program.
Marcin’s works, which include, besides videos and live performances, performance-based (or staged) photographs, use her own identity and personality to explore the depths and limits of our social behaviour, trusted rites, and the resulting vulnerabilities. Seemingly unchangeable conditions are shattered in surprising ways, and freshly and playfully reconstituted on several levels. The viewer, as a pure observer in a deceptive state of safety, is confronted with an apparently trustworthy situation that Marcin, bit by bit, exposes as a social construct and humorously questions. The enduring emotional intensity of the work opens-up the (frequently bewildered) observer to new ways of viewing customary systems and connections. The title “Lost in Translation”, as a thematic headline, indicates the possibilities and simultaneous limits of human communication.
On Monday, January 24 at 7.30 pm Marcin presented her work and the current project exhibited during an artist’s talk at the Deutsche Börse Residency.

Nadja Verena Marcin studied at Columbia Universit. She has already won numerous prizes (amongst others: International Artist Career Development Grant, ARTworks International Inc., Fulbright, DAAD) and exhibited her works in international exhibitions, biennials, and in galleries (amongst others: Videonale 11 & 10, Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Mediations Biennale, Poznan, 2008; Fulbright Award, 2007; “Jumpnights”, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2007).

From January 21 (until March 5, 2011) her works have be shown at the jens fehring gallery under the title “Lost in Translation”, during the opening reception, Marcin has shown a newly conceived performance. On January 27 at 7 pm, the jens fehring gallery has presented a screening, curated by Marcin, of video works by the artists Ronnie Bass, John Bock, Daniela Libertad and Shelly Silver that conceptually and thematically belong alongside “Lost in Translation”.