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Carla Liesching

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Carla Liesching
Born1985 (age 38–39)
Cape Town, South Africa
EducationRhodes University
Known forPhotography
Websitecarlaliesching.com

Carla Liesching (born 1985) is a South African artist based in Ithaca, New York.[1]

Early life and education

Carla Liesching was born in Cape Town in 1985 and was raised in various small towns around SA, mainly in the Eastern Cape. She received her BFA, specialising in photography, video and sound installation, from Rhodes University in Grahamstown and moved to Johannesburg shortly after graduating in 2007.[2]

Life and work

She has spent time working in Taipei, Taiwan and is currently based in New York City.[3]

Her work investigates human relationships to structure, particularly ideological shifts in geographic organisation and narrative. Liesching's practice addresses conceptions of self in relation to place, movement, distance and belonging. Interested in the photographic portrait's agency in the shaping of identity narratives, Liesching creates archives of staged environmental portraits, which parodically hearken back to the medium's early involvement with human classification systems and pseudo-scientific exploration (for example, photography used in the aid of physiognomy, physical anthropology, phrenology, Darwinism and colonialism.)[4] Liesching's installations often include sculptural and sound components alongside her photographic work.[5]

Liesching is represented by Cape Town-based gallery Brundyn & Gonsalves.[1]

Her series The Swimmers,[6] shows people "in countries and cultures from all over the world, dressed in nothing but their bathing suits. Only the backgrounds are neither beaches, nor oceans [...] Instead, Liesching sets her subjects against abandoned factories, motionless waters, fields of grain and rough urban landscapes. [...] because they've grown up in a world that has changed too quickly and is losing all of its points of reference along the way [...] It's a way of underlining their desire to belong, their need for identity, while they live -- naked -- before the whole world."[7]

Good Hope (2021) "critically examines South Africa's colonial past". The book is made up of both photographs and personal prose. The photographs—clippings of images from tourist pamphlets, old magazines, current newspapers and family albums—focus on the gardens and grounds of the Cape of Good Hope. The work is about colonialism, tourism and trade.[8]

Publications

  • Good Hope. London: Mack, 2021. ISBN 978-1-913620-42-4.[8]

Solo exhibitions

  • Masked Portraits, Gordart Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2008[9]
  • A Bear in The Woods, Moja Modern Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2008[citation needed]
  • The Swimmers, iArt Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, 2011[10]
  • Geography and Some Explorers, Brundyn & Gonsalves Gallery, South Africa, 2013[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ a b "Carla Liesching biography". Brundyn & Gonsalves. Archived from the original on 4 May 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  2. ^ "Everywhere and Nowhere Spaces". Art South Africa. July 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  3. ^ "Carla Liesching". About PhotoManhattan. PhotoManhattan. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  4. ^ "Artist Statement". Carla Liesching. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  5. ^ "The Swimmers – Installation". Carla Liesching. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  6. ^ "Carla Leisching". Selected Creatives. One Small Seed. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  7. ^ "Capturing A Lost Generation In Nothing But Their Bathing Suits". HuffPost UK. 24 July 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2021.
  8. ^ a b "Carla Liesching critically examines South Africa's colonial past and the imagery and mythology of the 'world of whiteness' - 1854 Photography". www.1854.photography. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
  9. ^ "Carla Liesching at Gordart". Listings: Gauteng. ArtThrob. June 2008. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  10. ^ "Carla Liesching: The Swimmers". Brundyn & Gonsalves. March 2011. Archived from the original on 25 June 2013. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
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