"Primates", 2022

Found Footage:
www.nasa.gov
www.wikipedia.org – File:Ham the chimp (cropped).jpg, 31 January 1961
www.netzfrauen.org – Photographs by Jasper Doest
www.misteraladin.com – Photography by Liz Carlston
Photography by Dian Fossey Gorilla Foundation

In her site-specific installations, made of various materials such as metal, Plexiglas and light boxes, Christine Schulz addresses current issues in our culture. In addition to the expansive constructions, she uses visual material that appears as self-filmed recordings or as found images from the Internet and feature films.

Christine Schulz has already illuminated our relationship to nature in her series of works VENTOUX I-VI (2011-2020). In this current installation, created for the exhibition Habitate at Schloss Biesdorf, images and films of primates are shown. Apes on the border between humans and animals.

Christine Schulz explores questions such as whether the life of an animal has a different value than that of a human being, or how much of a human being there is in a highly developed animal?

Strictly speaking, there are no more free-living primates. It is a matter of definition - the remaining reserves or nature reserves in which primates live are now so small that one can no longer speak of wilderness. From the overlapping habitats between nature and civilisation, which are used by the great ape as a habitat, remarkable changes, developments in the behaviour of primates can be seen.

Which images have shaped us, which images influence our positioning on these questions in the present?

The images are juxtaposed like the different voices in a discussion, creating a multi-perspective space, thoughts in space, work in progress – a kaleidoscopic, meandering view.

Born in Braunschweig, CHRISTINE SCHULZ lives and works in Garbolzum and Berlin. She studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig with Prof. John M. Armleder, Prof. Birgit Hein and Prof. Thomas Virnich and graduated as a master student.

Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including the Kölnischer Kunstverein, the Kunstvereine Hannover, Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich and Wolfenbüttel as well as the Kunstmuseum Bochum and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.

Works by Christine Schulz are in important collections such as the Goetz Collection in Munich, the collection of the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.

www.christineschulz.net