Building, Unbuilding, and Destruction: The Works of Artemis Herber.
Persephone’s Lament
Can you tell us more about your background/ education/training, even a short story about what made you do art?
Born and trained in Germany, I have always been interested in spatial and tectonic activities that shape our environments. I started my artistic career early whilst still studying. I received scholarships and awards that allowed me to travel across Europe. While working on my Master's Degree on concepts of Utopia – Illusion – Reality, I started creating artworks and installations on a large scale for the Kunstverein and cooperating partners that provided unused spaces such as a former historic train station quarries, parks, libraries, etc. As a cultural producer and other fellow artists, I also engaged in local communities. I became a founding member of a space for art that allowed us to work in our studio realms and form exhibitions and events in the city's cultural scene. All these early motivations and support systems kept me going even after a long break of teaching and being a mother. When moving to the United States in 2001, I decided to solely focus on art-making. After one year of settling and re-orienting, significant exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (NY) and the San Jose Museum of Art (CA) brought my extensive works of modular cardboard sculptures as installation settings into relevant venues.
The first years in America were influenced by the climate of the 9/11 aftermaths that demanded adaptations to a new culture and lifestyle. Series of paintings such as Lost Spaces, Thresholds, and Fences addressed the political atmosphere of the foreclosure crisis and recession. Those massive historical, societal, and economic events affecting and stirring societies fundamentally, the call for transformative shifts animated my artistic research and strategies towards the Anthropocene and how humans live in shared spheres towards current conditions on Earth. Initially series of Cardboard City exhibited at the Goethe-Institut in Washington DC addressed the spatial realms of industrial and urban development as a re-considered built environment. Through continuous research of the Anthropocene, I also realized that humankind's tectonic activities affect the built top layer of the Earth's surface and reflect on the unbuilt, the loss, and extortion of nature and its natural resources. Following series of No Man's Land, Liminal States, Erratic Landscapes, and Gaia Rise express my concerns about transformations in the land that destroy sustainable life from an anthropocentric viewpoint somewhat concerning all Earthbounders.
“Artemis Herber deals in ancient and even tectonic history in her paintings on shaped, tattered cardboard. The corrugated material once seemed integral to the artist’s rocky landscapes, but these (…) elegant pieces transcend their packing-box origins.”
What is it about Greek Mythology that inspires you?
Being of Greek heritage and influenced by ancient Greek narratives, arts, and philosophy, I developed concepts on how humans live in shared spheres towards current conditions on Earth in the context of polit-myth. I believe that ancient myths, no matter from the cultural backgrounds they derive from, re-connect with what we have lost today: our deep relation with nature. My research into the Anthropocene and how humans have affected the Earth's environment, geology, and climate, has been deepened through international residencies. For this year, two more residencies in Greece are confirmed to continue current topics of polit-myth. The Anthropocene is the field of my interest, where we find the most extensive collections of data from all various disciplines and create an ideal wholesome area of interdisciplinary approaches for artists and scientists today. Besides scientific data, narratives from deep time invigorate ancient thinking and a mindset that allows me to find meaning in the cosmos, forces in nature, and response-abilities (Haraway, Staying with the Trouble) during our existence on Earth.
When creating the series of Gaia Rise, I sought to connect with one of the earliest and most universal deities of ancient myth, the personification of Earth: Gaia, whose equivalents in Earth goddess have been relevant in Asia, India, or South American cultures like the Aztecs. However, Herodot describes Gaia not only as a caring or nurturing mother but also as volatile and erratic in nature. This insight motivated me to think about our present condition on Earth and how much our lifestyle has contributed to the exhaust and extortion of natural resources and the ongoing extinction of species, languages, cultures, and ethnicities. Those myths set exemplary narratives we need to remember as a call for change of paradigm shifts away from economies towards ecologies.
RAPE OF MEDUSA (Series of Gaia Rise) 2019, 90x10x100”
Acrylic and mixed media; commercial cleaning mop heads, incorporated into multilayered corrugated cardboard
Your piece ‘Prometheus’ brings ancient stories into the contemporary time. What does your work aim to communicate to the audience?
The myth of Prometheus points out the unique, almost anthropocentric position of humankind. The sculptural painting reveals tattered compositions, dynamic movements of unfolding surfaces culminating into the centerpiece of a hollowed dissolving shape of a lifted human figure withdrawing into the folds of wrinkles and cavities of an abstract landscape in time. The centered figure represents Prometheus, the greatest friend of humankind and representation of intelligence and knowledge, now, a disappearing species going extinct, punished by the sacrilege against the gods for not being humble enough devoting to the cosmic order in nature and ignoring the natural balance of life. The greatest friend of humankind disappears as a hollowed space leaving layers from dust, lint, and burnt coal into folding and unfolding geo-strata as wrinkles in time.
Shaped environments are echoed in my works of settings that seem familiar and yet come from another time. The images are witnesses from the future and talk about changes in our time while our actions took place in the past. They represent the energy of human activity, which raises questions on how our will to shape the world will behave at the moment.
Are there any contemporary artists that you are interested in?
Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, Olafur Eliasson, Frank Stella, Kara Walker, Shirin Neshat, Vija Celmins, Lorna Simpson, Rachel Whiteread, Agnes Denes, Huyghe Pierre, Marc Bradford and Valery Koshlyakov.
Has your practice always been focused on the relationship between nature and humanity?
I never really liked the distinction between nature and humanity. René Descartes ignited an unbridgeable dichotomy of "spirit" and "nature," a mindset which paved the way not only the triumph of modern science and technology but also for the systematic economic exploitation and exploitation of nature since the 18th century and in full tilt further into the Industrial Revolution of excessive exploitation. We have experienced a disconnection from nature and ourselves of being nature by putting us into supremacy above all other earthly being(s) and matters. This loss of connection demands to pick up those loose ends from the fringes' technocracy, (post)colonialism, and monopolies that hopefully will allow us to weave another tapestry of our existence on Earth. As Bruno Latour points out, the Earth is not the iconic "blue marble"; instead, there is a call to rebound with Earth as a "critical zone" (Facing Gaia, Latour, 2017). Gaia has risen as a fragile and complex system just a few miles above and below the Earth's surface, capable of sustaining life while being vulnerable to tectonic activities of humankind.
To create Prometheus triptych (2019-2020), you adopted an environment-friendly approach in terms of mediums, bringing up a sense of protective affection towards nature. Is your material choice influenced by your interest in Gaia, the primordial Earth Goddess?
There will probably never be an environment-friendly solution to our actions without consequences. Even my recent VR exhibition at Art Gate VR, that avoids footprints of travel and transportation depend on massive energy extraction of servers and computer use.
Unfortunately, I am still far away from being an environmental purist. However, recent series about Erratic Landscape or Gaia Rise due to my interest in connection with various aspects of the Anthropocene, mainly the mythological, the environmental, and the political, raise cautionary attention to selective material use. The re-use of lint from my dryer feels as ordinary as employing cardboard and other recycled materials of my everyday life that can be incorporated in meaningful artistic practice as a message from another time. Findings of tossed aggregate, concrete piles of neglected construction sites, coal from a fire pit, collecting scraps from my crumbling studio walls are a strategy of forensic anthropocenic investigation of tectonic activities in my own environment. At the same time, they reference to the universal cycle of the built, unbuilt, and dissolution, of becoming and passing.
PROMETHEUS TRIPTYCH
Could you tell us more about your Gaia Rise Series?
Gaia's map is extending globally. Being a chthonic deity, its origin lies in the geological strata of Delphi in Greece. Delphi was considered the center of the world for the ancients. According to the myth, Zeus had an eagle rise from each end of the world, meeting at Delphi. The exact location was indicated by the Omphalos (Greek "navel"). Gaia combined with the mud left over from the world after the end of the Golden Age and gave birth to Python, a winged serpent with clairvoyant abilities that lived in the place that was later called Delphi. After Python's execution, Delphi was wrested control of Gaia and was henceforth under the protection of Apollo. Gaia Rise undergoes an exploration into critical zones of our living conditions on Earth. The project started 2019 during the London UK residency Body and Place with TheCoLAB, continued as an artist in residence at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, and finalized between 2019-2020.
The cycle Gaia Rise depicts distinct mythological themes animated by Mother Earth's close and far relatives. Mythological themes are montaged into a tapestry of devastated, neglected, or exploited landscapes. Gaia Rise retells the myths of Mnemosyne, Perseus, Medusa, or Prometheus, which have formed the base of Western culture, updating these classics into cautionary tales. I have reinterpreted Gaia into extended versions to explore the political violence embedded into motifs of landscapes in volatile conditions that have expanded globally. I explore how Gaia is vulnerable and completely out of balance and all atmospheric formations of climate change as an outrageous result of human activity. At the end of the Gaia Rise cycle, Prometheus emerges as a culminating key figure, the greatest friend of humanity has mocked the gods by stealing the fire from them. For that betrayal, he was punished and chained to the Caucasian rocks. Every day an eagle consumed his liver that grew back before the torture continued the next day. The cruelty of the punishment for me reflects vanity and human arrogance against a cosmic order. I understand myths of ancient deities, not as a moral entity we know from Abrahamitic religions but an encounter with the cosmos and order of nature. The Gaia Rise series tells parables of our times: The Rape of Medusa that yarns around misogynist political leaders trying to manifest patriarchal bodies when women address the MeToo movement, when the elements water, air, and land are assaulted. The Perseids explores issues of detention, separation, and suppression. Melancholia addresses the entanglement of deep-time and human impact through the lens of land and its metabolic regimes. Among much more disturbing, most recent news about politically motivated Amazon fires indicate further and ongoing changes of our biosphere create scorched Earth of extortion, exhaust, mining, monoculture, and neglect of endless ends on Earth through economic driven political decisions. In decolonizing the Anthropocene, I propose polit-myth as an artistic strategy to seek a paradigm shift towards political decisions that are motivated by environmental concerns of climate change caused by human activity rooted in myths histories.
When the exhibition of Gaia Rise came to an end at the American Museum of the Katzen Art Center in Washington DC, 2020, it went into an almost six-month lockdown. Cynically, Gaia did not rise; instead, she stayed confined in limbo and made space for the even more volatile and raging Pandemia.
MELANCHOLIA (Series of Gaia Rise) 2020, 90x3x100”
Mixed media (acrylic, coal, pigments, shellac, honeycomb, packing paper) on many layers of corrugated cardboard and partially hammered out digging holes into the accumulated material, washed paint, filled coal powder, continuous collaging/de-collaging, disinetgration and reconstruction
You use a lot of colors in your work. Could you tell us about your color palette and how it contributes to the meaning of your work?
Color is another matter or body that interacts with corrugated cardboard, the ubiquitous signature of our globalized consumerism, that I process into multilayered paintings. Through disappearance and disintegration principles, I share underlying tales of ancient myths of powers and forces transforming the planet. My artwork tells stories from the past and ongoing extinction engraved into the Anthropocene era. Applying painterly gestures and join abrasive operations, destruction, disintegration, and reconstruction of tattered textures, I shred crusted layers of mixed media incorporated with found object, materials, and paint from corrugated cardboard, forming the delicate, vulnerable spheres that we occupy.
By combining diverse artistic strategies, distinct mythological themes montaged into a tapestry of devastated, neglected, or exploited landscapes can be formed.
Saying that, the structural can't be separated from the painterly application of colours or the process of painting at this point. The color palette is animated by a chain of reactions starting with the touch and feel of materials - it’s the provoking a sense of a place or matter deriving from memory. The painterly work itself is as tectonic and multilayered as the sculptural surface with its winding unfolding gaps, wrinkles, and ruptures. The painterly and sculptural gestures motivate each other into expressive moves, spills, gestures, actions. They culminate in multiple layers of colors, refining, and resonating accords until they are dissolute into energetic particles of pigmentation of contrasting coal dust, copper pigments, even iridescent or fluorescent top coatings.
What is your process of making? Do you have a favorite tool/medium?
The process reflects exactly on humankind's capacity of building, unbuilding, and destruction. I build up layers of corrugated cardboard, just with the purpose to destroy or deconstruct again. Mark Jenkins of the Washington Post pointed out “Yet Herber is a builder, as well as a destroyer. Many pieces feature multiple strata of cardboard, with molded layers that deepen the image while resembling construction techniques.” My favorite tools are worn-out mops, giant spatulas, and buckets of water. Those tools support the concept of erraticism, erosion, and raptures in our doing, the intended unintentional, the speculated unforeseen.
Do you have any current projects or shows that you are working on?
Currently, I am working on two themes, Mono-pol-lithic and Mnemosyne.
Mono-pol-lithic is a series of charcoal drawings. The troubling effects and consequences of the pandemic have proven how fragile and vulnerable life on Earth is. My ongoing interest in the Anthropocene continues through a new body of work based on the theme of Mono-pol-lithic: Monumental-Politics-Lithic. While forced to work from my studio or home, I focus on the relationships between time and acceleration. I am doing this by slowing down through my experimental drawing using charcoal and graphite. I seek to explore how political agencies have transformed and exhausted the land and how societies and cultures have done the same via manifestations of architecture, enormous structures of power, and massive tectonic activities. Since the Industrial Revolution (the Anthropocene marker) the use, and abuse of nature have accelerated. Now the great expedition of exploitation is disintegrating into a worldwide stimulus of reflection and stasis. My charcoal drawings unfold the moment of paralysis, adopting a traditional tool. Now re-engaging with charcoal, a mysterious, dark, and dusty material connects with my work's infrastructure forming raw, depleted, and dystopian environments. Charcoal, a material dug out from deep time, generates a massive geologic force into our presence and future’s atmosphere as it was one of the first tools humans used to create artwork.
The current project Mnemosyne – Traversing Boundaries on Meandering Routes of Memory is an initiative between nine international artists supported by the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University by revitalizing the ancient myth of Mnemosyne, the Titan of Memory, and mother of the Nine Muses. In the darkest months of the pandemic opening up a window of reflection, commemoration, and remembrance in times of sorrow, loss, societal and political insecurity was also the moment to reach out to fellow artists to find ways to cultivated forms of healing through memory.
Visual memory inspires artistic alternative and alternating courses within margins of time and today's realities. The Mnemosyne project will set new standards: artists look into history, narratives, and stories in recognizing the present as a reminder for the future. Within this context, artists may ask themselves how genuine and comprehensive their own artmaking can be, not only remembering the past but remembering what has to be thought of as a source of meaning.
What is the best way for the other to connect with you?
Resources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-renee-stouts-fiery-visions-draw-inspiration-from-jimi-hendrix/2018/12/07/535d8ec2-f6b8-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html
