Lecture 1

Critical Analysis

Erika Harrsch - Lecture

            Erika Harrsch is a visiting artist to our University for the semester from New York. She is originally from Mexico and has done work there, but has traveled and worked as well in Italy and Germany. Harrsch uses various types of media when exercising her passion for art such as painting, installations, photography, and collaborative pieces involving animation and video. The work Harrsch explains and described in her lecture is beautiful, different, very detailed, as well as meaningful.

            One of her first known pieces she worked with a scientist, and it involved the study of female butterflies, as well as correlating their origins with those of human females. The photos of human female genitalia were placed in the center of female butterflies with the same origin and where the genitalia would be on a butterfly. This piece evolved into many different works of art that were shown around the world, and at times it had been thought to be controversial depending on where it was being shown.

            The work Harrrsch does can also be political as well. In her lecture Harrsch stated that in a piece she tried to help portray, “Who has the power, money over us or us over power.” This piece took Harrsch’s original butterflies, but instead of having the genitalia on them she had the butterflies’ different sizes according to their economy and currency. I thought this piece successfully portrayed this idea of questioning currency, as well as being very visually beautiful and unique.

            Harrsch is currently in collaboration with a composer in a performance piece using her art visually animated and displayed as the music is played for the audience. This piece will be shown next week which I will be attending. The work appears not only to be very graceful and delicate but also incorporates sexuality in a very tasteful manner which is very difficult to do. It is also hard to pull this off as well when attempting to make another artist happy that you are collaborating with. From what Harrsch had described and had shown at her lecture it also looked like a gorgeous, very distinctive and different work of art that I am very excited to see.

            Overall the work that Harrsch has done shows her very unique way of thinking and passion for art, which I admire very much. Each work of art takes Harrsch a tremendous amount of time and it shows with each little detail. I really enjoyed her lecture and thought it was very beneficial in seeing such a successful artist as well as learning from her during the semester. The two questions I would ask are: What does she plan on doing after this collaboration? And other than her love for painting, what is her next favorite medium to work with?