Text on practice Clara

Clara Franke is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working with photography, videography, graphic design, costume/clothing design and ceramics. She was born in 1998 in Hamburg and studied in Albuquerque (attending Media Arts Collaborative Charter School in 2015), Groningen (Bachelor in Design at Academie Minerva 2022), Berlin (internship with THE PEOPLE° in 2021) and Rotterdam (currently following the Master "Lens Based Media" at Piet Zwart Institute). While constantly trying new mediums,, what one always finds in her work is an underlying sense of earthy organic colors and shapes (mostly green and brown tones ) with a dreamy, soft textured, intimate aesthetic. Her work serves as a call to action to meet each other and nature with curiosity and care, moving towards more understanding and sustainable behaviors.

Recently Clara has finished a 3 ½ minute short film on her close friend Amber. This film is a great reference when it comes to pinpointing the ethics and aesthetics of her film work.

The film touches on topics such as physical intimacy in friendships, female connection and herbal medicine. Addressing eating disorders and the connection she has found in this friendship, when sharing both of their experiences, which partially stem from a strong sense of comparison between, especially young, women. This marks Claras feminist groundwork of her process. Eating disorders are addressed quite directly in a conversation between her and Amber.

“It turns out a lot of girls and women have been through that. “

“We could have afforded any food, our parents would have brought us any food into the house, yet we refuse it. That’s what I found so crazy about our friendship. There I could, for the first time, talk about it with friends.”

“It was really bonding(...) to get the feedback that the others are there for you.”

“That this comparison is out of the way is really beautiful.”

Generally speaking the maker strives to create an empowering setting for herself and the women she portrays in which the layer of comparison moves towards the capturing and celebration of their beauty. Especially the medium of photography has been used to inflict a male gaze perspective on young females in the past decades. The experience of photography feeding into the opposite has felt empowering to Clara. This feminine energy she likes to describe as divine, is depicted in images which portray women with wings for example; angelic, beautiful, strong, elegant, playful, soft, sensual. These are traits she strives to visualize.

Clara for example created a short film on her grandmother's journeys to the “OstBlock" , meaning eastern Europe when it was still divided. Telling her grandmother's story from a documentary approach, combined with visuals her grandmother took herself and kept on dia photographs.

She also created two photobooks of which one has been self published. The book “The ORKZ” documents 50+people and their rooms/homes in a squatted hospital community, that Clara lived in herself with a total of 250 people. The book gave her the excuse of the camera and this book to step into people's personal spaces and start a conversation based on the artifacts they surround themselves with. She explored how the wide variety of people build themselves a home within this community and built a network within. The second photobook documents her time in Berlin, which combines her friend Maxis poetry with her own photography. An analysis of what the place is becoming and who they felt like they were becoming through the influence of Berlin. The photography is analog and generally soft; black and white, winter city shots and portraits of those she met and surrounded herself with.

Generally speaking Clara has been struggling with the idea of superficiality in creating portraits, not wanting to feed into today's obsession with youthful beauty and the idea of fame created around such.

When she first picked up a camera it came from a want to be seen. Clara wanted to be admired and feel beautiful. This was also when she developed a distorted self image and eating disorder. Together with a school friend called Mara she started a blog and later Clara started posting videos of herself on Youtube. Feeling a strong urge to be seen and analyzing the root of this glorification of fame and visibility online and offline are an ongoing process. Feeling the pressure of aging and being scared of fading beauty. What we are fed is a narrative of beauty that declines and only shortly serves in comparison to a whole lifespan.

But still the question stays; Do I want to be my own subject or do I create a space for others to share their lives?

Lastly, Claras graduation project was the creation of a sustainable clothing collection, made from second hand and self made materials. She chose to also create a magazine on the topic of the fashion industry, reflecting on editorial fashion photography and the meaning behind the pieces we own, the stories a piece of clothing can tell. Next to the magazine and clothing pieces Clara created a fashion film and a one shot process video as well as photography prints.

Her graduation year marked a generally stronger focus on crafts such as clothing making (sewing, spinning wool, crocheting, knitting) and pottery (making organically shaped rather practical objects).

The transformation from natural materials either using old techniques, or combining the process with new research has felt empowering and is something I want to bring more into my lens based work.

Either documenting craft women and men or myself during the process. This type of work I experience as deeply calming and exciting.

The mesmerizing effect the transformation of raw material to a product has on many i find intriguing. Having performatively spun wool at an exhibition or seeing videos of the process of clay work online and in established museums has shown me that. This may be due to our disconnect to the objects we use and purchase every day, that I see the childish magic effect one can experience when seeing the creation of a clothing piece or a simple vase.

Also the importance of surrounding ourselves and creating a home with artefacts that calm us and inspire us has been a striving idea. Organic shapes of hand shaped ceramics, soft textured photography prints or more bring in the needed nature approach that has been lacking in our urban spaces in my opinion.

I have also been printing photographs and would like to try printing on fabrics or project on fabrics, to bring a more textile approach to photography and film as well.

Next to creating objects that have the purpose of being in someones home, I also aim towards a rather installation focussed approach, in which I wish to bring together the different mediums that I have been exploring.

An installation for example on Kelp. In this way I could work with researching the materiality of the species, create sculptures, dye wool with it, create a rather documentary style video on it, create calming prints that embrace the organic shapes and colors, and showcase video loops of working with the material.

Also the expression of physical intimacy I want to embrace more in my work. That a kiss can be shared with family, friends and a romantic partner is often seen as challenging. In my experience I embrace my close friends with physical tenderness, which creates deeper relationships and a stronger feeling of being held by those around you. This could be shown in photographs of different embraces or video works that show close shots of hugs or other close physical contact. The shots I would imagine are long, so the viewer has time to analyze their own feelings when observing. This project might be a struggle, as films and photography in general might have numbed us partially when it comes to seeing intimacy. It should not appear too staged, so it can be related to and give an authentic feeling of intimacy.

Possibly these works could be projected or printed on materials that give a stronger soft feeling and celebrate the visceral experience of contact.

I enjoy the idea of installations that bring together different disciplines and mediums, which come together in my general handwriting and logic.