Rather than arriving at harmonious holistic insights, my art seeks out zones of experimentation, moments of upheaval, and untapped spaces in between, looking for what’s hidden beneath the surface-skin.

These installations are works of art that navigate an embattled space between the market, distributive justice, intensified use of resources, and productivity maximization. Today’s digitalized, globalized, and deeply commercialized consumer society calls for an artistic transformation.

The 2020–21 installation The Flows Rushing, consisting of a five-meter canoe crashing through a wall built out of several hundred fuel canisters, symbolizes the collision of interests between freedom and the market.

In light of current events, the installation The Flows Rushing pokes at an uncomfortable subject: the dominance of fossil-fuel based decision-making during the dramatic circumstances of wartime.

I’m vitally preoccupied with the debate over the conflict between market, environment, sustainability, individualism, and the common good. The work addresses the conflicting requirements posed by economic versus social infrastructure. As a metaphor for borderlessness, economics, and technology as driving forces of progress and optimism, the installation becomes a site of transformation—the canoe’s breakthrough—and thus embodies a cycle of distress imbued with hopes for emancipation, for breaking free.

Lilli Elsner