Maria Sewcz

Lorbeer, Mönchsbart und Aspik
  • Untitled, from: Laurel, Salsola soda and aspic, 2022/23, Inkjet prints, 23 x 23 cm
  • Untitled, from: Laurel, Salsola soda and aspic, 2022/23, Inkjet prints, 23 x 23 cm
  • Untitled, from: Laurel, Salsola soda and aspic, 2022/23, Inkjet prints, 23 x 23 cm
  • Untitled, from: Laurel, Salsola soda and aspic, 2022/23, Inkjet prints, 23 x 23 cm
  • Untitled, from: Laurel, Salsola soda and aspic, 2022/23, Inkjet prints, 23 x 23 cm
  • Untitled, from: Laurel, Salsola soda and aspic, 2022/23, Inkjet prints, 23 x 23 cm

The Berlin-based photographer of mostly urban structures was asked to search for the presence of the pig in the urban environment. Her pictures show it in portions, roasted, cooked, in aspic, etc. They also show interventions in what we commonly perceive as nature along with seemingly incidental, yet central pictorial commentaries, such as the Bremen, for example, the Bremen Town Musicians, a band of animals in solidarity, resisting human consumer economies.

Fahim Amir – another contributor to this volume – writes in detail about the non-human animal as an agent of resistance in his book Schwein und Zeit¹. Another author, Jenny Schäfer, draws attention to the way in which the consumption of meat accompanies and shapes biographies. It is touching when she reports how, for example, the bacon in the fridge of her grandmother, who had personally experienced existential hunger, can evoke feelings of security. Discussions about meat are directly linked to questions of distributional justice. The standard daily requirements laid down in the Social Code under the heading Food, Beverages and Tobacco are currently 5 euros for adults living alone, 3 and 3.93 euros for children and 5.34 euros for 15- to 18-year-olds.² How does this relate to the profits of the food industry and retail, and this in turn to the prices paid to farm producers for their work?

Using her mobile phone, Sewcz takes photographs in the aesthetics of the mostly spectacularly staged, approval- seeking Instagram food porn. But “glamorous” in these photographs is at best the setting or rising sun, which seems to be regulated by a human hand – an image of the superimposition of cosmic beauty and human presumption. Sewcz points out that she was accompanied in this project by the concept of “consumption”. It denotes such diverse issues as the use of goods, tuberculosis and the drinking of the fragments of the host dissolved in communion wine.

¹ Fahim Amir, Schwein und Zeit, Hamburg 2018/2021.

² Act on the Determination of Standard Requirements Pursuant to Section 28 of the Twelfth Book of the Social Code as of 2021 (Standard Requirements Determination Act – RBEG), Section 6 Family Household Consumption Expenditure on Standard Requirements https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/rbeg_2021/__6.html (retrieved: 20.4.2023).

Biography

Born in 1960, Schwerin, DE; lives in Berlin

• 1982–1987 Studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig • 1993–1995 Master student under Timm Rautert, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig • 2005–2007 Lecturer at HBK Braunschweig, DE • Since 2017 Lecturer at Ostkreuzschule for Photography, Berlin

E 2023 Touch. Politiken der Berührung, European Month of Photography, Amtsalon, Berlin (C) • 2022 Aufbrüche. Abbrüche. Umbrüche, Stadtmuseum Berlin • 2021 London, 2018, 2019, 2020, ongoing, bautzner69, Dresden (SE) • 2020 ÜberStädte, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin (SE) • 2019 Departure of the Soul, Ch. B., Studio Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (SE) • 2018 LAND__SCOPE, Münchner Stadtmuseum

P Jetzt, Berlin, Leipzig, 2023 • TR; Istanbul, Stuttgart, 2018 • inter esse, Göttingen, DE, 2013 • point out, Berlin; Unzeitspuren, Frankfurt a. M., 1995