I met Erika when we collaborated on Body Maps in 2007. We are now embarking on a new project with Maya Beiser. I could not be more thrilled! She is a visionary artist.
Born in Mexico City, Erika Harrsch has lived and worked in Mexico, Italy, Germany and New York. Her multidisciplinary art practice employs resources that include drawing, painting, photography, video, animation and installations, based on elements in both artificial and natural environments. Harrsch has participated in several Art Biennials including: Fokus Lodz Biennale, Poland 2010; Beijing 798 Biennale, China 2009; and the 5th International Media Art Biennale-Media City Seoul; Korea 2008. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in Mexico, the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, China, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain, UK, Poland, Turkey and Syria. It has been presented in museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art at the Live Whitney series, the Göteborg Konstmuseum in Sweden, the Museé de la Photographie a Charleroi in Belgium and the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea. While developing a multidisciplinary practice, created Bodymaps a video-animation with which participated in multimedia festivals and residencies worldwide, working in collaboration with the multidisciplinary company VisionIntoArt, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler of the Kronos Quartet and acclaimed composer Philip Glass.
In 2009 Erika Harrsch developed the project “United States of North America-passport” which is a continuation of the Monarch Butterfly series, this time opening up a dialogue on nationality and immigration. Harrsch immersed into the world of Lepidoptera six years ago when she started an ongoing research work with an entomologist. Has used butterflies in her work as a metaphor to address matters of identity, gender, nationality and the relationship of human beings upon its own nature and fragility.Through this period of time of continuous research, she has worked with different projects starting with the Imago series, which are photographs of butterflies from different countries that are digitally fused with photographs of female genitalia. Each woman and butterfly fused together match from the same country of origin. This series explores female identity through sexuality and their related values upon ethnic diversity, cultural and ideological heritage.
A second project with Lepidoptera followed, the installation Eros-Thanatos that has been exhibited in five different countries. This installation is a multilevel interactive piece with video, sound and sixty thousand synthetic, life-size monarch butterflies on the floor. It is an artificial recreation of a natural vulnerable environment, the monarch butterfly sanctuary in Michoacán, México. Eros-Thanatos represents the life cycle on earth and the results of environmental devastation caused by human interaction. It is also a reference to migration, transformation and adaptability, a re-contextualization of the way nature and reality is perceived. With the Monarch Butterfly subject Harrsch continued to open up a dialogue on nationality, immigration and identity and created the interactive project “United States of North America”. This piece includes a fictitious passport, suggesting an American continent absent of geopolitical borders, a single unified realm encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The passport features an original emblem that combines symbols of the three countries and at its center, a monarch butterfly known for its epic annual migration between México and Canada. Audience participation is essential to the installation; viewers are invited to spin a fortune prize wheel for the chance to win one of these passports, a sardonic act connoting the lottery visas in United States. This installation has been presented in China, United States and Poland.
for more on Erika: www.erikaharrsch.com
