Beatrix Reinhardt

Image credit: Tim Hopwood

Web: www.beatrixrreinhardt.com
Insta: @Beatrix.Reinhardt

BIO

Beatrix Reinhardt grew up in Jena, Germany. After the completion of her undergraduate studies in New German Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin she planned to study at the New School for Social Research in New York for one year. The one year became two and Reinhardt graduated with M.A. in Media Studies. During her studies at the New School she started her studies of photography, which she continued at Illinois State University. Since the completion of a Master of Fine Arts degree, Reinhardt has been living, working, curating and teaching in different parts of the world. She has been invited as artist-in-residence to universities and galleries in Finland, India, South Africa, Australia, China, Turkey, Vietnam and the US, amongst others. In 2005 she was appointed at City University of New York/CUNY and lives and works the majority of the year in Queens, N.Y.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My artistic production has been focusing on the politics of space. The works look at interior and exterior spaces exploring the relationship between space, memory, and history, and the notion of the trace. Repeatedly I am interested in looking at what I call “charged sites,” sites endowed with significant histories; spaces that endure(d) drama and/or tensions. However, my images offer little or no discernible evidence of this history, either the past event or any current tensions associated with it, the implications being that significance can only be materialized by human experience. Since 2022 I have extended these investigations by looking into the spaces in-between the spaces. I am interested in looking at ambiguously defined intersections that wrestle with the relationships between belonging and estrangement, gain and loss, life and death, hybridity and rootedness, and history and mythology. The imagery and materials used are generated by historical, personal, and current day events, with the aim to recontextualize, rethink or reimagine common dualities. Currently I am working on Dancing with the Roosters, an ongoing body of work that investigates the cultural, social, and symbolic dimensions of cockfighting. Initiated in 2024, the project brings together multiple media: including photography, objects, embroidery, painting, and sound.

ARTIST'S WORK

Ertüchtigung series - Chapter IV: Kumbha Mela
500 x 4.6 inches

The work is one continuous image. The photographs shown here are small excerpts of this image.
Statement: The translation of the German word “Ertüchtigung” is “strengthening”. The “modes of strengthening” that emerged over the centuries are based on belief or science, culture, crisis or development of thought…the list is endless.
Chapter four “Kumbha Mela” investigates bathers going to and coming from their holly dip during the early morning hours. The Kumbha Mela, during which Hindus gather to bathe in a sacred river, has been described as the greatest pilgrimage in the world. It is celebrated in a 12-year cycle by rotating at four sacred riverbanks in India.

Red Shoes: "Click your heels together three times and say 'There's no place like home' and you'll be there."
4 1/4 x 6 x 1 (open: 30 inches)

Handmade artist book with paper house that can be cut out and assembled.
Edition of 4
Attempting to manage a constant state of psychological emergency led me to wear the same kind of red boots between January 2016 and January 2021: summer or winter, hiking or visiting the opera. Dreaming/fantasizing that a simple click of the heels indeed could take one to another place felt hopeful. I clicked these heels frantically so many times.