Attempts To Be Many

About

The works shown in Attempts to be Many address the plurality 
of identities, revise historical assumptions and thereby enable 
the retelling of body tales (Körpererzählungen) and learned 
narratives. Subversive additions to, as well as reformulations and 
recontextualizations of images, symbols and narratives 
representative of a hierarchical society (Dominanzgesellschaft) 
emerge in the process. The works exhibited in the Philara 
Collection navigate a series of complex questions concerning 
class, race, gender, sexuality and identity, and community. 

Collage is fed by the omnipresence of visual material being 
produced by contemporary society. Fragments taken from this 
ubiquitous circulation are juxtaposed and overlapped and thus 
detached from ascribed meaning, carrying them over into new 
contexts that permit hybrid interpretations. Similar to the 
practices of sampling and mashup (in music), collage 
techniques incorporate pre-existing elements from different, 
unknown, sometimes antagonistic sources and mark a process-
based approach conceived to unify associative and concrete 
meanings and allow for alternative readings. 

Especially in times of conflict and social upheaval, collage 
unfolds its emancipatory potential; it allows artists to visualize 
contradictions and emphasize the expanded variety of possible 
readings. The use of easily accessible and freely circulating 
materials from magazines or digital content from the internet 
often alludes to underlying political, activist and economic 
motives. Based on a transcendence of boundaries, they become 
objects of (re)presentation. With regard to questions on cultural 
identity and the way we perceive ourselves, collage is a suitable 
method for shifting notions of identity from ideologically one-
dimensional perceptions and rigid attributions towards dynamic, 
ongoing processes of (self-)discovery.