INHABIT #11 // Clara Jo
@Aisling Mccoy
April – July 2024
Clara Jo is a US artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin. Her artistic projects are often generated in interdisciplinary contexts and collaborations in the field of science.
Her works incorporate film, photography and installation to re-engage socio-political understandings of the world in ways that entangle the senses. She is interested in how geological scars as vessels for cultural memory bear witness over time to beliefs and prejudices related to crises, political borders and ecological disasters. She plays with speculative narratives voiced by allegorical protagonists to offer alternative readings of the terrain through their material imprints and deep erasures, and questions how these stories feed into collective imaginations and fictions during moments of crisis. As part of the residency, Jo's project explores the interrogation of scientific data as a "voice" to provoke and reveal hidden meta-narratives. This research-intensive film and sound project explores legacies of colonialism and environmental injustice through voice and narrative. Engaging with archives is a crucial part of her practice in relation to uncovering and processing buried or erased narratives from colonial contexts.
Biography
Clara Jo earned a BA in Photography from Bard College, New York and completed her Meisterschülerin from the Institute for Spatial Experiments at the University of the Arts, Berlin. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally at Gropius Bau, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Jeu de Paume, Paris; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill On Sea; ARKO Art Center, Seoul; Spike Island, Bristol; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg. She has previously held fellowships and residencies at Art Explora, Paris; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, USA.
