From the laudation for the Art Award of the City of Krumbach, 12.3.2013
“Home is Somewhere Else is a book object and part of a planned multi-part series: so far, two albums have been completed, another is in the making. The artist herself expands the title statement into a conditional sentence: “Home, once you have lost it, is always somewhere else”. What at first sounds tautological triggers questions: Can one find home again? Can one only have it in the past or is home in the end rather a utopia or a trauma? Erika Kassnel-Henneberg captures and processes these general questions in a very personal, quiet way that does not, however, exclude the viewer but attracts him or her through sensual presence: old photo albums are elaborately restored, provided with gold-framed picture windows reminiscent of icon painting and then filled with personal material: The photos are to a lesser extent historical relics, but to a greater extent the artist’s own photographs, most of them snapshots taken from a moving car; this already formally addresses travelling, searching, not being at home. At the same time, the new pictures, covered with a digital patina, reflect the difficulties of the search for home: they are images of longing and fakes at the same time, repeatedly attempted appropriations of the past and the search for one’s own position in the present. The work is not a spectacular “eye-catcher” – it is a “quiet”, consistently formed work that unfolds all the more sides and makes all the more strings sound, the more you take your time with it.”
