Carola Friess, Inanimate matter and living substance II, 2023

Carola Friess,Sheltered Shadows,, 2023

Carola Friess,Held through the favour of another II, 2023

(un-)homely entanglements

by Carola Friess

Front Gallery - 18.01.24 - 29.02.24

(un-)homely entanglements is Carola Friess’ first solo exhibition with AVA Gallery featuring some of her most recent works. In the intertwined realms of the familiar and unfamiliar, everyday objects serve as a starting point for Friess' artistic explorations. Tactile and filled with material presence, her work hovers on the threshold of damage and repair, protected and abandoned, familiarity and estrangement, inside and outside, attractive and repulsive. It is within this flux of opposing ideas that Friess endeavours to cultivate an awareness of the interdependent relationships and precariousness inherent in ideas, places, objects and subjectivities. This awareness becomes pivotal in acknowledging our collective vulnerabilities and mutual dependencies, forming the groundwork for an ethos of care — a central tenet in Friess' artistic pursuits derived from her background as a surgical nurse. Surgery embodies the act of selflessly caring for an unfamiliar individual by dissolving boundaries — as manifested in the paradox of healing through incisions, the interweaving of life and mortality, the juxtaposition of the beauty of the human body with aspects often perceived as repulsive or abject, and the relation between suffering and strength.

In Sheltered Shadows, razor wire is intricately interwoven with lamp shades, creating visible tension between resistant and pliable materials. The presence of razor wire, typically emblematic of seclusion, violence and inequality, infiltrates the domestic space associated with safety and comfort — prompting a provocative convergence that blurs perceived boundaries.

In Struggle Upward, foam pieces were mended with sutures, dipped into pigmented plaster and polished with sandpaper. Through its seemingly endless height, this column links to the eternal cycle of life and death. The suture running across the piling elements becomes seemingly preserved for perpetuity. In the ink drawings Liminal Folding I and II, the artist endeavours to disrupt conventional portrayals of drapery associated with familiarity and comfort by interweaving unfamiliar elements with a deliberate sense of disorderliness created by dripping ink throughout the drawing process — confronting the viewer with an uncanny and disconcerting atmosphere reminiscent of the operating theatre, a subject documented by the artist over multiple years as a surgical nurse.

Carola Friess (b.1986, Hannover, Germany) lives and works in Cape Town. She obtained a BFA from Muthesius Academy of Arts and Design in Kiel (2019) and an MFA from the University of Cape Town (2022). She has been awarded a DAAD Fellowship in 2021 

Carola Friess,Inanimate matter and living substance II, 2023