[LIVING ROOM]
When we build shelters in a corner of the living room as children, we are really responding to a basic survival instinct that we keep throughout our lives: the search for a safe space. As the Living Room series by German artist Jana Sophia Nolle shows, a house is more than a building: it is a space for roots and identity.
Living Room was inspired by the shock that Nolle felt on arriving in San Francisco, the city with the most billionaires per capita in the world but where a third of the population lives on the streets. Nolle captures this contrast by reconstructing the improvised architectures of homeless people within wealthy homes. The series is based on intense field work in which, for two years, Nolle investigated their construction techniques and their emotional bond with the shelters. “That’s why, in addition to the structures, I portray the objects that they carry from one place to another,” says Nolle. “Because everyone I spoke to refers to their home as an expression of who they are and what they value in their lives.”
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Jana Sophia Nolle was born in 1986 in Kassel, Germany, and lives and works in Berlin with her daughter. She received her MSc from SOAS University in London, UK, and a degree in Fine Art Photography from Ostkreuzschule Berlin. Nolle’s photographs and video works are included in numerous public and private collections and have been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Her recent exhibitions include venues such as the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Haus am Kleistpark in Berlin, Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst in Bremen, Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, and the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. Since 2019, Nolle has been an affiliate artist with Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, USA.
13 – JANA SOPHIA NOLLE
[LIVING ROOM]
OUTDOOR INSTALLATION
WHERE: ALGORTA STREET 74
Collaborator:
