Sans Titre

A jumble of everyday objects is strewn across the grey concrete floor of a vast hall: a music player, a teapot and spices, a telescope, dishes and cups, a fax, accompanied by various kitchen appliances such as a mixer or toaster, a toilet brush and so on. In her video performance Sans Titre, Stéphanie N'Duhirahe balances barefoot across this hazardous obstacle course without once letting her feet touch the ground. It is a fragile dance atop objects of everyday use that the artist has staged for the camera. The floor of the hall becomes a symbolic abyss, with the performer moving along the edge and constantly threatening to fall in. She finds brief, precarious footholds on the islands formed by the objects. The camera follows her from station to station, at first showing close-ups only of her feet and then increasingly pulling back in the course of the performance until her entire body is seen in the frame and her instability is revealed in full. In her work Sans Titre, Stéphanie N'Duhirahe depicts life as a tightrope act on the stony field of the earth, which we humans traverse with unsure footing. The artistic act symbolizes the fragility of existence on this planet. (Tina Rehn)