Mathilde ter Heijne

In her installations, videos, and performances, Mathilde ter Heijne examines social, cultural, political, and economic backgrounds to gender-specific phenomena, placing the main focus on the perception of contemporary reality within different cultures and their respective histories. In her partly participative works, the exposure of social structures and the communication of knowledge play an important role. As a result, she doesn't view history as a complete, immovably set monolith and questions the rigid fixing of this narrative in the present. In order to illustrate this, she also draws on prehistory. Recreated in clay, the works on display here are objects referring to archeological finds dating back to 28,000 BCE (in the Swabian Jura) and 6,300 BCE (Greece). By presenting them in transportation cases and illuminating them, ter Heijne lends these enlarged replicas in clay an spectral aura. Entitled Experimental Archaeology, she is referring to the fact that the definition of reality doesn't stop at the mere physical presence of historical objects, but in fact can only be situated in the “in between”.