Title of work: hair, 2007/08 and bed, 2008

hair, 2007/08

Video 18min

Three women; a Jew, a Christian nun and a Turkish Muslim student - all living in Berlin - confronted by the word ‚hair’. They believe deeply in their religion, also in their freedom to decide to wear a scarf, a veil or perücke. However, when they begin to speak about their own consciousness, all come closer to uneasiness: their own body as an expression of identity and integrity is endangered by protecting their hair.

bed, 2008
hair from people of Slovenj Gradec, ballon

SHORT BIO:

Ursula Neugebauer’s work are perfectly fittingly described by the wonderful words of Oscar Wilde who said a realist is one who knows how to dream. While regarding reality, she does not for a moment oversee the poverty and misery of a prosaic world, yet nor does she lose sight of the poetical possibilities. The analytical indicative, the `so be it`, follows on from a utopic konjunctive. If , in her work, Neugebauer lays her finger in the open wound, then the work also incorporates the remedy to heal it. It is precisely this quality that is the immensly powerful and so comforting paradox in her work: that the artist understands how to console us with the things that wound us. Not only through the choice of poetic themes and motives, but through the magic and charm of an aesthetic transsubstantiation. Neugebauer’s comfort remains in the successful form. Even if the work occasionally makes use of biographic material, no artist could be less vain than Ursula Neugebauer. The personal and subjective that draws one to the work is always a means to an end, to offer an exemplary and thereby universal experience. Other than this, the biographic in the work is inconceivable.

Michael Stöber, in: „aus der Haut gefahren“ Catalogue U.N.

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Website: ursula-neugebauer.de