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Kara Uzelman
Fire Watcher
LISTE 09 | 9 – 14 June 2009
For LISTE 09, Kara Uzelman (*1978) presents the solo project Fire Watcher.
In the summer of 2006, a suspected serial arsonist was accused of torching several houses in Strathcona. Kara Uzelman's home was among the sites targeted by these attacks. Strathcona, the conceptual backdrop for the project, is a working class district of Vancouver and its residents have always been from many ethnic backgrounds. The area also contains a number of rundown social housing projects, cheap hotels and is a popular location for Hollywood film productions using the historical building stock for their sets. Recently inflated property values, redevelopment for the 2010 Winter Olympics and rapid gentrification have reinforced the economic disparity of the area, leading to severe political tensions. In view of the conflicts between the various interest groups in the area, speculations ran wild as to the suspect's motivations.
These events inspired Uzelman to invent the character Fire Watcher. Through the eyes of this ambiguous figure she imagines the territorial feuds between property owners, residents, politicians and transients as the desperate clashes of warring survivalist factions. Self-sufficient and living off of scavenged materials, the Fire Watcher observes the situation in the sense of a vigilant protector and is ready to intervene at any time.
Beginning as a site-specific project Fire Watcher consists of various sculptures, installation elements, collages and a video produced in collaboration with the artist Curtis Grahauer. The materials for the installation were predominantly found at the arson sites or in their immediate surroundings. The individual art works represent the Fire Watcher's tools and armour and are installed in the space like props for a film set. Kara Uzelman has made a protective jump suit from metal beer can openers, a watchtower from papercrete bricks, fire-extinguishing equipment from hose pipes and water canisters, a ladder from found wood and old cloth and four framed collages containing accompanying archive material.
In her work, Kara Uzelman considers the correlation between found objects and narrative, reality and fiction. With an educational background based in urban planning, archaeology and fine arts she develops process-based, site-specific sculpture and installation works. In previous projects, the artist conducted an excavation of her own backyard in collaboration with an archaeologist. On another occasion, she bought an entire garage sale, solely using these appropriated possessions in her daily life over a three-month period. For her recent exhibition at Sommer & Kohl, she followed the traces of a fictional group of researchers on their quest for the element Cavorite, which is said to be impervious to the forces of gravity. Collected materials from these actions are transformed into sculptures, photographs and performance props and integrated into several exhibitions.
In 2009, Kara Uzelman's works will be on view in the following exhibitions: from 19 June – 16 August in Sentimental Journey, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (CA); from 26 August – 6 September in subvision. kunst. festival. off., a co-operation between HFBK, Deichtorhallen and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (D); and from 17 September – 1 November in the exhibition Black Hole is Also Supernova, Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond (CA). From September – December the artist will be in residence at Triangle France, Marseille (F). Kara Uzelman is a member of the Vancouver-based art collective NORMA.
For further information and/or images please contact Sommer & Kohl. |
