Transformation (exhibition catalog)

2012

This PhD project Transformation and Transience: a studio exploration of transformation through change, pattern and ornament, made in the period 2008-2012, explores the connection between transformation, the abject, materiality and ornament in twentieth and twenty-first century contemporary art. I pose the question; can a critical identification with transformation and transience of materiality and the abject provide a basis for artistic practice and dialogue? As a result of the research into this question, I propose that it is transformation that offers new meanings and interpretations in art. It does this through a transformation of physical structure of materials, through decay, disintegration and by the usual reading of an object being challenged by reuse in artworks that alter and challenge psychological interpretation. This question is explored and related to themes examined both through my visual practice and a discussion of relevant artists in this exegesis. My resulting visu...

It is the curatorial concept to implant a variety of different thematic aspects into the confrontation between the static and moving images. While the photo exhibition is showing works by just one single artist (the Cologne based Robert Mohren) and his (male) point of view manifested in the distance of the represented female to him – the viewer is confronted with the backside of a woman, who obviously turned away from the spectator opening heart and mind instead to him/her towards the open landscape – unspoken and unspecified desires- without a recognizable target – hiding her individual identity. Thus the photo works do not portrait one or more individual females. The same is good for what the artist is calling “landscape”. He is not “portraying” specific sceneries or individual forms of nature. “The female” and “the landscape” become symbols, the photo image a philosophical message. While the exhibition is presenting a number of individual photo works, the videos, depending on their duration, consist of a much larger quantity of images (frames), which – differently than other linear film formats like short or feature films – get each one an individual relevance, requiring a different kind of sensual perception. The selection of “Traces of Transformation” is taking a counter position in many ways. On one hand, the videos – besides the one by Kai-Welf Hoyme – were created by female artists havíng each one a different cultural background and coming from different countries propagating therefore generally a female point of view (to be projected into the female protagonist of the photos, also the video by the only male video maker is no exception) – and may be identified with the different positions and perceptions of the female protagonist of the photos. While the photos were choosing the “impersonal” space of the open landscape without any obvious target and desires the photo artist is projecting into both, the videos – directed to the spectator, reflect an intimate and very personal space projecting this intimacy and completely different desires into the female protagonist of the photo works – giving her the individual identity and history only (back) in each single photo work. This difference (for instance, also in terms of gender behavior) is underlined by the different artistic media – while the photos are static forcing the spectator to project the process of his own interpretations into the image, by confronting the static works with moving images, the static images change their actual status, because now movement manifested via series of significant individual images was entering the static image – processes which allow the spectator to interpret completely differently through a progressively changing point of view. Juxtaposed with each other the photo images and the “movies” start communicating, and by doing so they include the audience and the present artist, as well. Associations, perceptions and desires split into pieces leave traces of mutual transformations. The spectator gets actively involved in the process of transformation. The videos, as such and juxtaposed to each other – thus separated from the exhibition context – generate another different traces of transformation, as well as the individual video does – separated from the curatorial selection. As complex artistic performative statements the videos cause the female protagonist (of the photo works) actually to leave the status of the original artistic concept and turn around to the spectator in order to communicate with him. During the process of communicating the perception of the spectator is changing while the photographic image factually remains unchanged, of course. In the context of the “finissage”, both, static and moving medium, complement each other generating a new kind of experience through interacting.

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2022

Encounters with art can change us in ways both big and small. This paper focuses on one of the more dramatic cases. I argue that works of art can inspire what L. A. Paul calls transformations. Classic examples include getting married, having a child, and undergoing a religious conversion. Two features distinguish transformations from other changes we undergo. First, they involve the discovery of something new. Second, they result in a change in our core preferences. These two features make transformations hard to motivate. I argue, however, that art can help on both fronts. First, works of art can guide our attempt to imagine unfamiliar ways of living. Second, they can attract us to values we currently reject. I conclude by observing that what makes art powerful also makes it dangerous. Transformations are not always for the good, and art's ability to inspire them can be put to immoral ends.

Guide to the installation The Transformation of art, Venice Biennial, 2013

Review of an exhibition featuring Linda Hall, Joseph Kurajec, Lydia Walls and Benjamin Jones, all purportedly "outsider" artists in one way or another

represent a culmination of two years of rigorous art-making and transformation in the MFA program. These artists are driven by questions of utopianism, transgender mythologies, cyclical violence, erasure and gentrification, material and creative process, and spatial and mnemonic perception. Though working across diverse mediums and themes, all of the artists pursue their inquiries through the intricacies of materials: how they Nancy Sayavong: Foundation II: Flooring, 2017; handmade ash hardwood, laser burned Persian rug pattern; dimensions variable; courtesy of the artist.

T.Gillen (ed.), (Re)productive Traditions in Ancient Egypt, 2017

Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim 1. I would like to thank Todd Gillen for all his work on the correction of the English version of the text. Further thanks go to the team of the Theban Painters Project, University of Liège, and most of all Dimitri Laboury for the discussions we had about intericonicity / interpictoriality and the application of related concepts to the study of ancient Egyptian art.

Text for my installation as part of the 2013 venice Biennial

2020

ROT Magazine, 2020

Anaïs Hazo is a transdisciplinary researcher, artist, designer. Working with food, taste, nurture, images, design, text, cultures, fermentation, anthropology, language, philosophy, lands and soils -in a simple, embodied way. This interview results of a 36 hours chat between Brussels, Belgium (EU) and Hartford, Connecticut (USA). ROT issue ZERO is part of an artistic research focused on forms and practices of fermentation. It aims to produce experiences for artistic practices, challenging ideas of transformation, cannibalism, wildness, exuberance, excess, noise, opacity, death.