Traditional Japanese ways of dealing with loss and mourning meet a special form of classical European visual language, which exert a great fascination on the artist. Bones, ceramics, corals and textiles are transformed into artistic objects, as are taxidermied animal carcasses. They allude in a multi-layered way to the rituals and connotations handed down over the centuries in the Catholic Church, such as the veneration of relics. Haruko Maeda contrasts this with a very personal view of mourning against the background of her own cultural background. The death of her grandmother, the feelings and emotions triggered by it, but also the very personal way in which she deals with the loss of people close to her, become visible in paintings as well as the objects mentioned. The appeal of the pictures and objects lies in the dissonance of beauty and pain, the juxtaposition of the very different traditional ideas of dealing with death in European and Japanese mourning cultures. What ultimately connects the two is the question of how the pain of loss can be given a form and the possibility of a new beginning. Haruko Maeda’s works do this in an impressively captivating way.
Over the Threshold is a reference project of the Catholic Church of Upper Austria / Parish of Hallstatt and the Department of Art and Culture of the Diocese of Linz / for the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024.
The second part will open on Sunday, 2.6.2024.With works by Aldo Giannotti, Markus Hofer, Jochen Höller, Klara Kohler, Rosmarie Lukasser, Roman Pfeffer, Franz Riedl, Six/Petritsch, Wendelin Pressl and Betty Wimmer
Contact:Josef Zauner, j.zauner@schule.at, 06134 8246
