With works by Sam Vernon

With her site-specific installations, Sam Vernon creates dynamic visual worlds. She explores questions of representation with regard to the issues of labour, gender and cultural diversity, turning a critical lens on institutional histories. The artist scans, prints and copies her own drawings and mixed media works on paper alongside found materials, which she assembles into large-format wall collages.

In her first solo exhibition in Germany, Sam Vernon explores the fate of the Kunsthaus. She personally has already moved over 30 times and is quite familiar with the challenges involved: administration, storage, archiving. Corresponding with the history of the building in which the Kunsthaus Hamburg is located today, the installation Alter-Reservoir focuses on the significance of working practices and the transmission of knowledge and history. Once a market hall for flowers, fruit and vegetables, this was a place characterised by communal labour. As preparation for the exhibition, the artist sifted through the archive and storage inventories of the Kunsthaus. In her newly developed photomontages, she combines autobiographical experiences with historical material such as exhibition posters, abandoned artist portfolios, found objects and documents from the institution. She forms meaning and connection to place through the process of speculating over forgotten ephemera as an attempt to illustrate archival history.

Curated by: Anna Nowak (Kunsthaus Hamburg) and Melanie Roumiguière (DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program)

Sam Vernon is a 2023/24 fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program