fading self-systems
In her artistic practice, Louisa Clement (*1987, lives and works in Bonn) examines the effects of advancing digitalization on people. In her works - from photography and video to sculpture - she poses central questions about the position of humans in a world that is increasingly characterized by technology, artificial intelligence and biotechnological reproducibility. How is our access to the world changing? What role does the body play in digital and virtual realities?
The human body is always at the center of these questions. As a site of political and artistic debate, it is both a medium and a material - shaped, regulated and constantly renegotiated. Clement works with virtual reality, artificial intelligence and experimental technologies to make the fluidity and complexity of these themes tangible.
A striking example is her work "compression" (2023): It makes use of a new biocybernetic storage method, DNA data storage. Clement translates all of her previous work from the binary code into the code of DNA, which is based on four amino acids. The resulting double helix is stored in a tiny stainless steel shell - and implanted by the artist herself.
"The body itself can thus become the carrier medium for an enormous amount of data. With this new work, Clement inscribes traces of her artistic work into her own body by having this double helix implanted. She is once again incarnating her own work. What does this technology mean for our physicality and identity? The body becomes a potential archive, but also a possible field for further biocapitalist exploitation." (Leon Jankowski)
Louisa Clement studied fine art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and graduated as a master student of Andreas Gursky. In 2016 she received the North Rhine-Westphalia State Prize for Fine Arts and in 2024 the Bonn Art Prize. Her works have been part of numerous institutional exhibitions: 2019 at the Ludwig-Forum Aachen and the Kunsthalle Emden, 2021 at the Kunsthalle Goeßen, 2022 at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn and the Museum Frieder Burda, 2023 at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen and 2024 at the Kunstmuseum Bonn on the occasion of the awarding of the Bonn Art Prize.
