PRIVATE VIEW: YULIA MAHR
A film by Toby Amies
Through her lens-based and sculptural works, Hungarian-born British visual artist Yulia Mahr has become widely recognised for unpicking the fabric of existence. From Studio Richter Mahr – the Oxfordshire studio complex she co-founded with Max Richter – Mahr’s creative explorations have expanded and transformed within a communal landscape, with roots in identity, personal history, and the experience of geographic displacement.
Distanced from her personal narrative, yet engaged in universal conversations informed by it, Mahr initiates a significant shift with new works exhibited for her solo exhibition Unbecoming at Berlin's Wehrmuehle. Resonating with women’s experiences and childbirth, and the perception of beauty, for this latest body of work, she journeys into the human body and its relationship with the natural world, seeking answers to questions connected to change, transience, metamorphosis and renewal.
In a short documentary, directed by Toby Amies, Mahr connects with the evolving underpinnings of her practice, through a childhood spell of silence that deepened her connection to color and beauty, and collaborative dynamics she learned as a theatre director. Considering the power of a work’s environment to redirect its meaning, she reflects on her personal landscape and how changes in perception have dissolved into her work as an artist, approaching art with an honesty and openness to transformation that have established her identity creatively.