7th INTERNATIONAL PHOTO-TRIENNIAL ESSLINGEN 2007
catalogue text
LAND IN LAND (2004) [...] looks at racial relationships between aboriginals and whites in Australia. Discrimination against the natives still persists. Racial prejudice is still rife, and Australian law lays down different penalties for the same crimes for whites and aborigines.
LAND IN LAND shows the darker side of the way white society deals with aboriginal identity. [...] Ayer’s Rock, which has mutated into a tourist attraction, is the spiritual heart of the country if seen through the reverential eyes of an aborigine, and the centre of the culture that is 65.000 years old.
And this culture asserts that Ayer’s Rock should be left in peace, and not even looked at. Australia is the continent of fire, and not just because of devastating conflagrations in the bush: places and people are full of energy, luminosity and colour.
Christoph Balzar selects shots from his collection and puts them together to make a new whole. Although viewers discover that the works in the series are digital montages, they are intuitively aware that despite all the construction they depict a social reality of which most people are unaware and that Australia largely distances itself from.
installation view, Villa Merkel, Esslingen, 2007