Nathalie Fari has presented her MA thesis performance “MEIN RAUM” at a media- and performance art festival in São Paulo and told at her birthplace about home, and vice versa. At least one world lies in between. Like a snail (and at the same pace), a body weaves itself into a home-like shell, a silver-grey sheet, almost cylindrical, a type of snail shell. Again and again, this human beast forces and squeezes itself in and out of the shell; and who knows where and what that is: “home”? Incidentally, the cardboard box, which is often the only piece of “home” in a favela on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, can at least be associated with Fari’s snail shell.

Michael Laages, nacht.kritik.de, 10.08.2010, my translation

In MEIN_RAUM the body serves as a medium to reflect two different spaces: the biographic (i.e., the artist’s personal moving process between Brazil and Germany) and the global (i.e., a world in transition where notions of insecurity, displacement and impermanence have become the norm). Based on this relationship, such a “body in crisis” brings forth the existence of another place – where identity and place may converge. Therefore, a round object made of paper was created to develop a narrative which describes in a visual, non-linear and associative way, the routes and detours of a human being who has left his/her place of origin and who is trying to adapt to a new reality.

To what extent, a place is “my place” and “my place”, my own life?

Events Dates: 04.05.09, Master Presentation, Brazilian Embassy, Berlin / 23.09.09, Exhibition “Deslocamentos”, Brazilian Embassy, Berlin / 25.11.09, Gallery Maud Piquion, Berlin / 26.07.10, Performance Art Festival VERBO, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo / 11.08.10, Galeria Virgílio, São Paulo

Credits: Concept and Performance: Nathalie S. Fari / Object and Costume: Michaela Muchina / Photos: Chris Von Ameln