Iris Häussler

Iris Häussler is a Canadian artist of German origin, working in conceptual- and installation art who lives in Toronto, Canada. She was born in 1962.

Much of Iris Häussler's work comprises a visual evocation of a narrative story. These fictional narratives are often centred on an exploration of social origin, such as family ties and relationships, and on physical origin, such as divergent life-histories or emigration.

Häussler studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Heribert Sturm with a focus on sculpture and has shown widely throughout Europe. Recognitions received include the [http://www.udk-berlin.de/index.php?ELEMENT=17796 Karl-Hofer Prize] of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and a [http://www.kunstfonds.de Kunstfonds] Fellowship. Häussler is currently best known for her immersive installations - fictitious memories - in which she constructs the habitation of a fictitious protagonist, operating on the border between obsession and art.

Iris Häussler emigrated to Canada in 2001.

"Her notable work includes:"

* In "ou topos" - Wien (1989) she recreated the living space of an aged man in a large, turn-of-the-century social housing project in Vienna, Austria. Focus of the installation was the bedroom that had been filled with thousands of tin cans of food and preserves, each wrapped in thick lead-foil and labelled with their date of expiry.

* "Pro Polis" (1993) was Häusslers first hotel intervention, near the Dome in Milano, Italy. The walls, floor, window and all amenities of a guest room were covered with a thick layer of wax, as the veritable cocoon of a stranded guest. Visitors obtained the key at the reception for an unsupervised experience of the space.

* In "Huckepack" (1995) she installed the personal belongings of a travelling woman into a room of a downtown hotel in Leipzig, Germany. An unmade bed, the presence of a used bathrobe and towel and other traces, confronted the stream of hotel guests who happened to share this space for a night with a virtual, yet tangible physical presence.

* In "Repla©e" (1997) - a piece of Institutional Critique - she responded to a curatorial invitation for a "Blind Date" with another artist, by sending a non-artist substitute into the studio at the Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm, Sweden.

* In "Monopati" (2000), two apartments in two separate cities - Munich and Berlin, Germany - were transformed into different narratives, connected only through a common picture of a school class, taken in the 1930s. Visitors were able to obtain the key to the apartments at nearby galleries and proceed on their own into the installation.

* In "The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach" (2006) Iris Häussler completed her largest and most complex installation, as her first major work in North America. Curated by Rhonda Corvese and widely reviewed and acclaimed, this multilayered installation in an entire house in downtown Toronto recounts the life of an aged, reclusive artist, through the mediation of an on-site archivist (often Häussler herself). As the initial phase of the project was not publicized as an art-work to facilitate what she has called "an unfiltered and unhindered experience of discovery", the subsequent disclosure has sparked controversy on the ethics of engaging uninformed visitors in an often emotional encounter with a fictional narrative that is initially presented as fact.

ee also

:Conceptual art:Installation art:Superfiction

External links

* [http://www.haeussler.ca Iris Häussler's homepage]
* [http://www.haeussler.ca/legacy "The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach"] project