Towards the Person

Installation of drawings and porcelain tablets; conté and black chalk on paper, porcelain, corrugated cardboard pinboard, wallpaper
2018
254 x 152 cm and 70 x 152 cm (dimensions variable)
Each drawing 36 x 29.7 cm; each tablet c. 18x23 cm

Exhibited at Borgerstraat Open Studios 2019, curated by Heyer Thurnheer and Kathrin Wolkowicz

Thirty-two drawings of passengers in the London underground.  The portraits reflect the fragmentary encounters with strangers that have become a quintessential part of the urban experience. At the moment of involuntary closeness people retreat into their private reading, listening, and thoughts.
On the facing wall are four porcelain tablets with portraits of Hannah Arendt, taken from her 1964 interview with Günther Gaus for the German television programme Zur Person. The public realm has changed, perhaps unrecognizably, since Arendt analyzed it in The Human Condition sixty years ago, but it remains the place where we reveal ourselves in action and speech.