Ηannah Toticki. Various

With a humour that highlights the dual nature of technology, utilitarian and helpful on the one hand, and binding and alienating on the other, Hannah Toticki builds mechanisms to obstruct the intervention of technology in human communication. Touch Screen Protection Rings do not allow our fingers to interact with touchscreens and protect us from the desire for constant updates. Smart Phone Protection Glasses create a similar obstacle, restricting our field of vision so that we cannot see the smartphone we hold in our hands. Focus Ware are two garments designed to force the gaze to focus on the person we are in conversation with, without being distracted by our mobile phones or computers. Finally, in Digital Embrace, computer keys are woven into a woollen dress, a metonymy for the body. The boundaries between technology and the body are transcended. How is the phenomenological experience of love, car and tenderness influenced by the physical dimension of technology, now that technology is an extension of the natural world?

One of the big challenges technology presents to intimacy and love is the question of paying attention. With the endless flow of information, constant communication and updates, we often fail to be present in the here and now. Short attention span and attention deficit are both afflictions of the digital age. But being present is a precondition for love.

Hannah Toticki’s work analyzes the pathologies afflicting our capitalist societies with their ideals of growth, efficiency, performance and their culture of exhaustion, stress, and burnout. Her practice asks whether there are other paths to the good life than those paved with optimisation, overtime and over-consumption.

The works presented in Modern Love or Love at the Age of Cold Intimacies– complementary to Hannah Toticki’s major solo exhibition at the ΕΜΣΤ (from January 26) – take shape as garments, accessories and furniture all of which imply the technology – body relationship.

Biography

Hannah Toticki lives and works in Copenhagen. Recent solo exhibitions include: Universal Human Resource, MOCAD, Museum of Modern Art Detroit and Work After Work, Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2021), The Land of Milk and Honey, KW Institute for Contemporary, berlin (2019), Slower and Cheaper, Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: Work it out, Kunsten, Aalborg, (2021), Shapeshifters, Malmø Kunstmuseum and Young Danish Art, ARKEN Museum of Modern Art (2020), RIBOCA1, 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga (2018). She is the recipient of several prizes including the Niels Wessel Bagges Art Foundation Prize (2019), the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Talent Grant (2018), The  Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fund (2018) the Hielmstierne-Rosencrones Foundation Prize (2017) and the StartPoint Prize, Prague National Gallery (2016).

https://hannahanbert.dk

PICTURE:

Hannah Toticki
Touch Screen Protection Rings, 2019
Silver, gold-plated silver, painted wood, 28 x 11 x 7 cm
Courtesy of the artist

 

ALL ARTISTS

EMST NEWSLETTER                 SUBSCRIBE
Hellenic Ministry of Culture
EL / EN