2020 “LETTING GO”
“What is art?”
Celina Schroeder, originating from Switzerland is a taught photographer that likes to work with multimedia and creates rather reflective works, that question and criticise the art world as such. While creating her woks, she usually uses her mental and emotional state, but also philosophical literature, as inspiration to gain closeness and control of her feelings as well as pushing the assignments boundaries to discover new parts about herself. Un-argued, art is a way of expressing feelings, but when does an artist’s body of work end or start? What makes us artists? And what is the power and meaning of art in today’ s world?
In the work “Letting Go” Schroeder seeks to initiate a critical reflection on traditional painting. Inspired by the laws of light used while taking photographs, Schroeder decided to include the element of light and indirectly towards the end more so the meaning of time in the final artwork. In order to create relevant content, Schroeder also researched the meaning of traditional painting and more so also the means to conserve historical paintings. Art is often referred to as historical heritage to capture a times spirit, in fact the profession of a restaurateur demands a bachelor’s in art history and is a highly selective and specialised profession. It seems that the human’s species is highly committed to ensure not to manipulate, to lose or forget our history. But in times of worldwide crises like COVID-19, we get confronted with how fragile human constructs are in reality and that in fact we are not in control at all.
Indirectly, one could dare to say, that maybe even the question might raise on how relevant our work and existence really are; This question could be superficially answered by the phrase “nothing lasts forever” and brushed off in order to calm the negative emotions connected to the realisation humanity is in fact highly fragile, however to truly accept this fact, to endure the consequences of it, might be much harder than we ever thought. Therefore Schroeder’ s work is meant to be an homage to transience and the positive side effect of it: change; if we learn how to truly let go, we might find real control (empowerment) and meaning after all.