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MARIANA HAHN
(b. in Schwaebisch Hall, Germany. Lives and works in Paris.)
Born in Schwaebisch Hall in the south of Germany, Mariana Hahn lives and works between Berlin and Paris. After initially pursuing Theater Studies at ETI, Berlin in 2005, she graduated with a Fine Art Degree at Central St. Martins, London in 2012. Hahn’s practice is driven by the exploration of the relationship between the body and the transmission of memory and knowledge. Silk, hair, salt, copper, and textile are part of her research on memory and its means of transmission. Hahn poetically questions human fate as a universal condition through photography, performance and video. Her artistic practice is based on thinking of the body as carrier of continually weaving narrative. She believes that ‘weaving’ is a metaphor for creating human autonomy and often uses textiles to take the place of the human body, the textile itself becoming the carrier of the living narrative.
Mariana Hahn has participated in international biennales including: Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France (2021); the Venice Biennal, collateral event My Ocean Guide (2017); the 56th October Salon – Belgrade Biennial, Serbia (2016); the Biennial for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2014). She has exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries and festivals, such as: MOMENTUM, die Raeume, PS120, and Diskurs, in Berlin, Germany; The Moutain View, Shenzen, China; Ding Shung Museum, Fujian, China; Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China; Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong; Gelleria Mario Iannelli, Rome, Italy; Trafo Museum of Contemporary Art in Stettin, Poland; Corpo Festival of Performing Arts, Venice, Italy; amongst others. She has participated in Artist Residency programs, including: the Mill6 Foundation, Hong Kong (2016); Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2017); Treeline Residency, Capalbio, Italy (2017); and others.
BURN MY LOVE, BURN
2013, Performance Video, 5 min 24 sec
Burn My Love, Burn explores the body as the carrier of historical signature. By inscribing a poem on a shroud that once belonged to her recently deceased grandmother – and then burning and consuming its remains – Mariana Hahn examines the relationship between text, memory-making, and the human – particularly female – form. Originally shown at MOMENTUM in the exhibition Missing Link (2013), the work took the form of a video installation together with objects made from relics of the performance, photography, and video stills. Burn My Love, Burn was donated to the MOMENTUM Collection following this exhibition. MOMENTUM has been working with Mariana Hahn since inviting her to make her first live performance, and her first post-graduation artwork, in the exhibition About Face (2012), at MOMENTUM Berlin.
“The body does so by will, it inscribes, devours the story, becoming a container that vibrates and lives within a narrative. The shroud becomes the elementary signifier of such a historical narrative, it has been impregnated by the story, acts as the monument. Through the burning, it can become part of an organic form in motion. The text conditions and creates the body within the very specifically hermetically sealed space. The words activate the body’s field of memory as much as it creates a new one, adding on to the net of connotations the figure has toward words. The ritual becomes the form through which this transformation can be made, the body eats the body, destroys and paints again, another image. Again this is done by the word, it creates the flesh, gives it differentiating coloration, its plausible point of view. The body acts as a paper, it is inscribed by those murmurs of history, becoming a living artifact of its own history.”
[Mariana Hahn]