20 september 2022, Flor Linckens
Laura Hospes: photography as part of a healing process
If you consider how many times it featured on Instagram last week, it would definitely rank as one of the three most popular artworks featured at Unseen: an impressive video installation by Laura Hospes in which you see a naked woman slowly, by hand, rid herself of a second skin of clay. The work was presented in the multidisciplinary Unbound section of the fair and was accompanied by a live artist performance during the opening, resulting in much admiration from viewers. Missed it? Until 1 October, you can view an exhibition with work by the Dutch artist in LANGart in Amsterdam.
Laura Hospes has a complicated relationship with her body, which she has been recording with her camera since she was sixteen, in order to establish contact with the viewer. The resulting self-portraits are a direct reflection of her mental well-being, a refreshing alternative in a world where people usually only share a perfect picture. Since her childhood, Hospes has struggled with anxiety, depression, loneliness, self-mutilation and an eating disorder, which she treats with the help of therapy and hospitalisations. The artist attempted suicide but also describes a tipping point when she travels to Canada with her younger sister. Caring for her also implied caring for herself, which led to a newfound relationship with her body.
Hospes also uses photography as a means for her acceptance and processing process, in which care and healing are central. The photographer visualises emotions such as fear, despair and sadness. She shares an intensely personal side of herself, a side that she cannot always put into words. A few years ago, she made the photography book UCP, named after the psychiatric ward where she stayed for a few months. De Volkskrant newspaper called the work one of the best photo books of 2016. Hospes also made the book to make people in a similar situation feel less alone.
Hospes' most recent works are at the intersection of photography, sculpture and performance. The artist is interested in her body as the carrier of the soul, but in her new works in particular the skin is central: the largest organ of the human body. A thought that fascinates Hospes, in a literal and figurative sense. She was inspired by a theory of the French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu, which states that your ego (as Freud defined it) also has a skin. Hospes looks at that skin as the outermost layer of your mental state.
Laura Hospes, Second Skin, 2020, LANGart
While still a student at the Photo Academy, Hospes won her first prize, an exclusive Emerging Talent Award from LensCulture. She later received a Jacob Riis Documentary Award, a Young Masters Art Prize, a Silver Camera and a prize from the Belfast PhotoFestival. Her work has been featured in museums such as the Louvre and the Stedelijk Museum, and has appeared on the front cover of The Huffington Post and in numerous other publications including The Daily Mail and Yahoo.
Laura Hospes, Ugly Thoughts, 2022, LANGart
