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Odessan Klumbas

Plant sculptures that transport a piece of Ukrainian infrastructure to Berlin - these are the “Odessan Klumbas” by Ukrainian-Canadian artist Kandis Friesen. The sculpture series was initially shown as part of the exhibition “Her left year is shorter than her right” at the Galerie im Turm in Berlin.

To continue the story of the artist and her works, the planted “Odessan Klumbas” are now on permanent display on the terrace of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung building in Berlin.

(Odesan Klumba)
Kandis Friesen
2022, concrete, each 72 x 72 x 32cm

Photo documentation

Artists photograph of a klumba in Odesa, Ukraine, 2019
Documentation/Research
Klumba ((клумба) in Odesa, Ukraine, 2019 Photo: Kandis Friesen

Artist

Kandis Friesen works with the dispersed monumental. Drawing on diasporic language and geographies, her compositions build from architectural, material, and spectral inhabitations of exile, amplifying minute and myriad histories at once. Her recent work in sculpture, writing, video, and sound uses history as a central material, proposing frameworks for structural resonance, grafting, and disrepair.

Her work has been presented at Galerie im Turm (Berlin, DE), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, DE), Chicago Architecture Biennial (Zhigaagong / Chicago, US), Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory, CA), Festival International du Films sur l’Art (Tiohtià:ke / Montreal, CA), MIX NYC (New York, Lenapehoking territory, US), Athens Digital Arts Festival (Athens, GR), and Jihlava International Film Festival (Jihlava, CZ), among others.

Her work has been supported through grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, and she has been artist in residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and the 2021 CALQ Québec Studio at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Friesen holds an MFA in Art Theory & Practice from Northwestern University and her video works are distributed by Groupe Intervention Vidéo.

Friesen lives in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal and Berlin.