VideoArtWorld: Controversy Surrounds Artist HEIDE HATRY Success - HEADS AND TALES in Madrid During ARCO 2010

Images: https://www.heidehatry.com/heads_and_tales.html

MADRID, February 17, 2010 - Surrounded by success and controversy, Heide Hatry presented
last night in Madrid her latest exhibition, Heads and Tales, along with a
publication under the same name and a video artwork, documentation of her
impressive human-like sculptures made out of pig skin, animal parts and
accessories, and inspired in personages selected by renown writers admired by
the artist.

With her bio-art works, Hatry approaches society's double
moral regarding the use of animal skin and fur, always provoking a cloud of
controversy while admiration for her ability to re-create these three
dimensional sculptures of women, as a momentary goddess who brings them to
life for one day. Before the skin gets dry, and looses its human-like look,
she captures the portrait that will document the existence of these book
personages, and so the story becomes more than illustrated.

International visitors who are now in Madrid for its annual
appointment of ARCO Art Fair 2010 assisted to last night preview of Heads and
Tales, reaching an enormous and specialized public, including critics,
curators, gallerists and other artists, all of them touched by this so
special artwork.

They say the human face is the door to the soul. Heads and
Tales gives a moving and original view on this subject. Who are we really?

Marina Abramovic

Heide Hatry is a force of nature. She is an artist and a
humanist who is making a selfless contribution to life. And that is what art
has always been about.

Joel-Peter Witkin

Heads and Tales opens in Madrid during ARCO:

Place: Fundacion Alianza Hispanica, C/ S. Pedro 22, 28014 Madrid, Spain

Preview and book launch: Tuesday February 16th, 8:00 p.m.

Vernissage and reading of Luisa Valenzuela's Simetrias: Wednesday
February 24th, 8:00 p.m.

Exhibition: February 24th - March 10th 2010

In collaboration with artLabour www.alannalockward.com and
VideoArtWorld www.VideoArtWorld.com

www.videoartworld.com/data/bulletins/Heads-and-Tales-by-Heide
-Hatry.html

www.alianzahispanica.org/heide-hatry.html

www.iac.org.es/heide-hatry-en-la-fundacion-alianza-hispanica-
heads-and-tales

(Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste
this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field. Remove the
space if one exists.)

Press Release:

Fundacion Alianza Hispanica proudly presents a preview of Head
and Tales an exhibition of works by German artist, Heide Hatry. This preview
is part of the institution's parallel activities during ARCO Madrid and will
include a book launch on the eve of the official opening of the fair. The
vernissage will take place a week later, on February 24th.

Using an experimental process employing fresh pig-skin and
eyes, Heide Hatry creates sculptures that portray imaginary women of almost
unquestionable veracity, because the animal skin is so similar to human
flesh. The completed objects are photographed and Hatry has engaged
twenty-seven writers to give them fictional lives for the resulting
publication. The book is a collaborative anthology published by Charta Art
Books (Milan/ New York, 2009) with an introduction by Catharine A. MacKinnon
and texts by emergent and established authors such as Luisa Valenzuela, whose
text, Simetrias, will be read at the vernissage.

The portrait of a face staring into the camera or captured in
a snapshot doesn't normally conjure thoughts of death, in fact quite the
opposite, even though we are often, in reality, looking at the living image
of the dead when we view a photograph. Every photograph is a memento mori,
but as we prefer to forget that reminder of death, we are easily persuaded
that these images, too, represent real, living people.

Hatry intended her sculptures to provide springboards for
stories, reminiscences or meditations on the lives of women. She asked a
number of female writers to select the image of one of her women and create a
life for her. As the visual work addresses issues of violence, death and
gender identity, the writing reflects similar concerns as they are specific
to women, not necessarily from an obviously politically fraught or polemical
perspective, but more typically resorting to fantasy, satire, irony and other
subversive modes of presentation to disrupt the hegemony of the everyday and
release the power of its horror.

In her introduction to the book, renowned feminist theorist
Catharine A. MacKinnon remarks, "Finding a way to be a woman is finding a way
to live with fatal knowledge." Hatry has a penchant for difficult subjects
that press directly against mortality, fear and alienation. Her sculptures
speak the fatal knowledge that others are at pains to suppress.

Exhibitions are held in conjunction with the release of the
book Heads and Tales, (CHARTA, Milan/New York, 2009), a collaborative
anthology with an Introduction by Catharine MacKinnon, Heads by Heide Hatry
and Tales by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Roberta Allen, Jennifer Belle, Mei-mei
Berssenbrugge, Svetlana Boym, Rebecca Brown, Mary Caponegro, Thalia Field, Lo
Galluccio, Diana George, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Jessica Hagedorn, Elizabeth
Hand, Heather Hartley, Joanna Howard, Katia Kapovich, Lydia Millet, Micaela
Morrissette, Carol Novack, Julie Oakes, Barbara Purcell, Selah Saterstrom,
Johannah Schmid, Iris Smyles, Luisa Valenzuela, Anna Wexler and Can Xue.

Different moments of feminist thought and praxis converge in
Hatry's career, particularly those related to the symbolic violence intrinsic
to meat consumption not only at a domestic level but at a global one. Heide
Hatry lives and works in New York City, Berlin and Heidelberg. Alongside her
art praxis she has curated different exhibitions and edited more than a dozen
catalogues, among them Carolee Schneemann, Early and Recent Work, A Survey,
2007, Pierre Menard Gallery

Alanna Lockward

FURTHER DOCUMENTATION:

Extract of an interview by Ron Broglio.

3. In Heads and Tales you use animal skin and body parts to
fashion heads of women. You then photograph these and ask writers you admire
to "select the image of one of my women and create a life for her." Did the
writers know the heads were formed from animal parts? Did the animals' deaths
affect your work and their writing?

The writers were made aware of the nature of my project and
materials when I invited them to participate in making the book, and of
course this fact would have to have some effect on their writing. I didn't
really think of the question in just the way you pose it before, but upon
reflection I see that there are several stories in which killing an animal
plays a part, though not uniformly in a horrific way, in fact at least once
in a darkly and persistently comic way. As to how this affected my own work,
the material I used was mostly offal, waste by-products of the slaughtering
process, and therefore even more demeaned essences than meat, pelt or
leather, and to me it lent a poignancy to the new creatures into which it was
fashioned, which I sometimes imagine I see, especially in their sad or
clouding eyes.

Many of the stories in Heads and Tales do treat of death or
violence or oppression, and I would have to surmise that the traces of
violence in the scoring of the pigskin of which they are made, the occasional
residues of subcutaneous blood, and the slight or sometimes greater
eccentricity of the fabrication itself must, to some extent, have invoked
such thoughts. And after all, in making the works, I did have in mind the
history of violence that characterizes the universal experience of women,
even if I didn't allude to that in my prospectus.

Heide Hatry Commentary written by Julie Oakes (c) 2008

Heide Hatry is one of those women who run with the wolves. She
expostulates against the prim and brandies a new essentialism, a credo that
acknowledges the primal, that celebrates basic instincts and expands the
notion of femininity. She does this with her body, and with fit, sexy
assurance turns heads at the outset, using her female allure to gain
attention. Then she grants a peak at something beyond the pale of the more
discretionary set. With video, photography and sculpture coalescing her
conceptually avant-garde subject matter, she offers a fresh take on the
'gentler sex'.

Is there that great a difference between standing in front of any
phenomenal art piece? An early Bellini, Botticelli's Venus, Picasso's
Guernica, Gericault's Raft of the Medusa,a large Jackson Pollock drip
painting, Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, all of the phenomenal art works that
cause the "wow!' reaction. Are they not all based on a sensation?

Heide Hatry's work with blood, for instance, can be associated with the
luridus realms of death and provoke a reaction akin to having witnessed a
murder. A shiver runs up the spine, a step is taken away from the spectacle
and an expression of awe emitted. It is because there has been 'blood let'.
For example, Hatry, dressed in a chic, short white wedding gown, skinned a
pig in one of her performances. She ended up covered in blood, the beautiful
white garment gradually stained a deeper red over the course of the
performance. Awful! - 'awe full', and yet blood is also a traditional element
of matrimony. The hymen is broken, the sheets hung out for inspection and
until the egg is fertilised, the woman bleeds each month.

Hatry has captured herself on video as she 'lays' an egg. In one
instance, she is nude, covered with dirt and the scene is set in nature. This
is the 'wild' woman who perceives the event is nearing and quite naturally
from her vagina, the lips swelling as they release her bounty - an egg is
laid. In the second video we see a smart, seemingly sophisticated woman (the
artist) in business attire - although the skirt is very short and the legs
very long and bare - carrying a shiny silver laptop. She, too, 'lays' an egg
and then ends the dynamic performance dramatically.

Much like a movie review, it is better not to tell the ending for it is
worth not knowing the ending in order to catch the sensation from the initial
viewing of the piece. Once again awe! Hatry has created an art work that
causes a reaction in the senses. It is not solely a sexual reaction, although
this is not to be ignored for it is titillating to watch a woman push an egg
out. It is more than a pornographic response, however. It provokes a sense of
wonder at the connection having been made between the idea and the physical
enactment of it. It is a mental placement of oneself in relation to the
artist - "she did that! Could I?"

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: Creating Life

The portraits in Heads and Tales are photographic
documentations of sculptures I made out of animal skin and body parts,
intended to provide springboards for stories, reminiscences or meditations on
the lives of women. I asked a number of writers I admire to select the image
of one of my women and create a life for her. As the work addresses issues of
violence, death and gender identity, the writing reflects similar concerns as
they are specific to women, not necessarily from an obviously politically
fraught or polemical perspective, but more typically resorting to fantasy,
satire, irony and other subversive modes of presentation to disrupt the
hegemony of the everyday and release the power of its horror.

My intention with the work was to make it as life-like as
possible, vivid and sometimes disposed in positions suggesting movement. I
used untreated pigskin to cover a sculpture I had made out of clay, with raw
meat for the lips and fresh pig eyes in order that the resulting portrait
would appear as if it were looking at the viewer with a vital expression,
which the photographer had just captured at that moment. In fact, a
photographer taking a picture of a model does more or less what I've done
with my sculptures: the model will be made up, its hair will be done,
appropriate lighting and pose will be chosen, etc. Or, if you prefer, what I
am doing is reminiscent of what a mortician does in preparing a corpse for
viewing: creating the illusion of life where there is none.

Taking photos of my sculptures is like reconstructing life, it simulates
a simulation by fabricating an image of a fake face, an image calculated to
deceive the viewer, since taxidermy (from the Greek, taxis: order or
arrangement, derma: skin) and photography work so well together. The fake
image appears convincing because we expect to see what we are used to seeing.
The portrait of a face staring into the camera or captured in a snapshot
simply doesn't conjure thoughts of death, even though we are often, in fact,
looking at the living image of the dead when we view a photograph. Every
photograph is a memento mori, and of course we like to forget that reminder
of death, so we are easily persuaded that these images represent real, living
people.

I didn't make any demands on the contributors as to form or content. I
simply wished that they would breathe life into these inert forms with their
words. Since the violence that is often at the heart of women's experience
certainly pervades the images, I rather expected that the texts would to be
related to pain, abuse, loneliness, madness, violence and death, etc.,
though I imagined that they could also be connected to, say, beauty, love,
motherhood, ageing, plastic surgery and any number of other themes, perhaps
exploring the pain and mortality that pervades those themes as well. In any
case, the simulacra that inspired these literary creations, and which are,
thus, life-creating in themselves, intend to invoke a play of subject and
object, of life and death.

I am delighted that I was rewarded with a collection in which the unknown,
the uncertain, the arcane lives of virtually anonymous human beings who have
suffered more or less obvious or explicit harms are thematized, not to
mention how powerfully they are evoked in the contributors' words. I feel
that it is a step toward understanding the female experience.

I owe the authors who have so generously participated in the project my
heartfelt appreciation.

Heide Hatry

Contact: VideoArtWorld, Macu Moran, macu at videoartworld.com, +34-647-522-256; For more information: Alanna Lockward: +49-173-231-51-37, artlabour at yahoo.com (English / Spanish)