Magical Rage
Clara Bahlsen

It is the feeling of rage – along with its control or suppression – that she translates into precisely constructed still lifes, in which everyday objects form a web of artistic, biographical, and cultural references.

The accompanying autofictional short texts offer fragmentary glimpses into family dynamics and the memories they evoke. Like the photographic still lifes, these texts contain hints and absences, allowing rage to emerge as a complex and ambivalent phenomenon.

In a world shaped by polarization and emotional loss of control, Magical Rage opens up a field of tension in which the layered complexities of inner conflict are brought into relation, translating rage as a raw, contradictory emotional state into an enigmatic visual language.

Clara Bahlsen studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and was part of the postgraduate class of Prof. Ute Mahler and Robert Lyons at the Ostkreuz School of Photography, Berlin. Her works are shown internationally, including at the Kunstverein Hannover, the Kommunale Galerie Berlin, Photo Saint-Germain, Paris, and IACK Kanazawa, Japan. She has received numerous awards and grants, among them a grant from the German Künstlerbund and the Aenne Biermann Prize for Contemporary German Photography.