Lost in translation

The solo exhibition Lost in Translation presents recent works by New York–based video and performance artist Nadja Verena Marcin at jens fehring gallery, Frankfurt. Centered around her 2010 video Hotel—filmed at the “Larchmont” Hotel in Greenwich Village—the show unfolds as an investigation into the precariousness of communication and the fragile architectures of social ritual. During the opening, Marcin expands this inquiry through a newly conceived live performance, while further screenings and an artist talk extend the dialogue into the broader cultural field.

Marcin works with her own identity and presence as both subject and medium, using the body to probe the codes of behavior that structure everyday life. What appears familiar and trustworthy gradually destabilizes: social constructs reveal themselves as staged, humorously exaggerated, or unexpectedly fractured. Through this strategy, she confronts the spectator with their own complicity, pulling the observer from passive safety into a space of uncertainty. The result is a heightened awareness of how systems of interaction operate—and how easily they slip into absurdity.

The exhibition title, Lost in Translation, underscores the limits and possibilities of human exchange, whether through words, gestures, or silence. Miscommunication becomes not a failure but a productive tension—an opening into other modes of understanding. To amplify this theme, Marcin curates a screening of works by Ronnie Bass, John Bock, Daniela Libertad, and Shelly Silver, artists who, like herself, navigate the unstable terrain where meaning falters and new forms emerge.

In Lost in Translation, the act of speaking, gesturing, or simply inhabiting space becomes a fragile negotiation between self and other. Marcin’s practice insists that what slips away in translation might also be what most urgently connects us.

Program

Thursday, January 20, 2011, 7:00 pm
OPENING
Exhibition opening with a newly conceived performance by Nadja Verena Marcin. Introduction by art historian Bettina Haiss.

Monday, January 24, 2011, 7:30 pm
ARTIST TALK
Nadja Verena Marcin in conversation at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

Thursday, January 27, 2011, 7:00 pm
SCREENING
Curated by Nadja Verena Marcin, with works by Ronnie Bass, John Bock, Daniela Libertad, and Shelly Silver.