Lucas Odahara

 

Oh Hintergrund, tell me where to go now, 2024
Installation at Neue Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k., Berlin, Germany, 2024


Including works:

Os Desorientes da Pantera, 2021
Glazed ceramic tiles, wood
144 x 104 cm each

Sleep and Death (Rasse und Schönheit), 2021
Glazed ceramic tiles, wood
144 x 104 cm each

Sleepless, 2022
Glazed ceramic tiles, wood, steel wire
ca. 160 x 200 x 60 cm

Still Men, 2022/23
Glazed ceramic tiles, wood
144 x 104 cm each

To give animated figures the impression of movement, 2023
Glazed ceramic tiles, wood, steel wire
20 x 20 cm each

I was under the impression that leaving was a backwards motion, 2024
Paper, steel, wood
120 x 90 cm





Through his work, Lucas Odahara often engages with narratives that challenge existing power structures. His artistic practice primarily involves the use of ceramic tiles as a format for his glaze paintings, often in parallel with the practice of writing. The installation Oh Hintergrund, tell me where to go now (2024) brings together works from various series of works over the past four years into a modular wall structure. The figures visible on the glazed surfaces are interwoven into a multilayered reflection on the body and its construction through race, gender, and national identities. The fragmented nature of the installation conveys that a body can never be objectively perceived or understood as entireties, but rather as multitudes. By leaving the German word Hintergrund untranslated in the title, Odahara draws attention to its use in Germany as shorthand for “migration background.” For Odahara, the work serves as a close consideration of his own “background” and raises questions about the futures that can be built upon it.



Images: Installation view at 'A Home for Something Unknow' at Neue Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.). Berlin, Germany 2024

 

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