AORTA
Chemnitz Germany
Aorta, an installation in the public space, invites reflection the political meanings of purple while connecting two culturally distinct neighborhoods in Chemnitz. As the aorta supplies oxygenated blood throughout the body, this rail underpass tunnel links Sonneberg, home to a large migrant population, with Chemnitz-Zentrum, where the Kunstsammlungen is located. The tunnel's interior is entirely painted violet and illuminated with blacklight, like an Aorta representing healing and the potential for new ideas to flow into the opposite areas it connects.
Mea Culpa (2020)
Patricia Kaersenhout is commissioned by the German Foundation for Art and Culture in Bonn (DE) to develop a new work for the international traveling exhibition Diversity United - Contemporary European Art. Shown from 12-11-2020 til 14-02-2021 at the New Tretyakov Gallery Moscow (RU) and afterwards in Berlin and Paris.
Kaersenhout’s proposal is based on an investigations into the legacies of power and wealth associated with slavery in the regions historically controlled by today’s European powers. Its title, Mea Culpa, refers to the traditional Christian practice of atoning for sins through enduring physical hardship during ritual pilgrimages. Kaersenhout brings this practice into the present day by suggesting the acceptance of guilt by figures representing today’s powerful elites, onto which the audience is invited to project their own understanding of the crimes for which they may wish to atone.