Matriach
Zurich-born London-based artist Andrea Hasler, known for her wax-covered fiberglass works that resemble meat, has a collection of fleshy tents and boulders with arms and legs.
Titled ‘Embrace the Base’, the sculptures were commissioned by New Greenham Arts for Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, a site that held women’s protests against nuclear weapons storage in the early 1980s. Hasler’s work is inspired by the tents that the protestors erected outside the military base which is now used as a cultural meeting place.
According to Hasler, her artworks reference the historical events that took place at the site and touch upon how it is being used for recreational purposes today.
Loaded with symbolism, her pieces can be read as metaphors–two tents, a full-sized and a smaller one, hint at the relationship between a mother and child. Hasler says, “Metaphorically I am taking the notion of the tents which were on site during the Women’s Peace Camp, as the container for emotions, and “humanise” these elements to create emotional surfaces... It’s almost like I am taking the fabric of the tent, the sort of the nylon element of the tent, and I make the fabric, this skin layer as sort of the container for emotion, or sort of the container to hold emotion, as in the skin holding emotion.”
‘Embrace the Base’ is currently exhibiting at the Corn Exchange Newbury & New Greenham Arts till 11 April.
Installation view: Matriach and Next of Kin
Matriach (detail)
Next of kin
Installation view ‘Irreducible Complexity/You and I’ and ‘Irreducible Complexity/heart’
Irreducible Complexity/you and I
[via Beautiful Decay, images via Andrea Hasler]