Home is Where You Are Happy
Haus Mödrath has a long and eventful history, functioning first as a stately home, then successively as a maternity home, a children's and a refugee shelter, a Nazi training center, and the home of a family with 15 children. Today, it belongs to an art collector who has opened up the space to exhibitions but wishes to remain otherwise anonymous. But what if the house itself cannot help but revive its resident ghosts? What if any art displayed inside cannot help but appear like an accumulation of strange furniture, paintings, and objects that reveals something about what happened here – encircling the landlord in his or her absence?
The work of the participating artists all directly or indirectly addresses the themes of home, domesticity, and family life, with all its happy (and tricky) implications. And the exhibition’s title, Home Is Where You're Happy, is borrowed from a song written by Charles Manson, whose childhood home was anything but happy, and who eventually founded his own murderous "Family." Thematically linked through an array of dialogues, the artworks become representatives of all the psychodynamic processes, fantasies, and memories still haunting Haus Mödrath.
The exhibition opened on October 8, 2023, one day after the outbreak of the war in Israel, where Sasportas was invited to present the video work GHARDY – Local Voices. The proximity between the opening date and the onset of the war was deeply unsettling, particularly in light of the work’s content.
It seems that a great deal of active information constantly exists beneath the surface, accessible to us - depending on how available we are to listen.
Alongside the film GHARDY – Local Voices, several drawings from two series - Cosmic Rifts and Rifts of Absence - were also presented.