Based on a two-month residency in Senegal, Katja Aufleger is presenting objects, video works, installations and a spontaneous photographic diary in dialogue with Gilli Stampa.
In her works, the artist explores balances, power structures, the latent possibility of creation and destruction as well as Orange Money – a mobile payment system by the French telecommunications company Orange which used to be widespread and monopolistic in many African countries.
Aufleger’s Orange Money consists of 12 bronze sculptures and a video. Filmed in the streets of Dakar, it shows in various sequences orange sellers meticulously peeling fruit. The focus on this gesture creates a tension between the roundness of the orange, the delicacy of its peel and the sharp metal of the knife. These initially harmless actions, which in repetition become abstract, emphasize the humorous, poetic quality and the ambiguity of the gesture.
The spherical bronze sculptures were created from the oranges peeled in the video. Like little planets, each cast has a special surface structure – just as the artistry of the various peeling techniques distinguishes each stand from the next and gives the peeled fruit its personal touch. The bronze oranges are sold individually. With every sale, 10 % go to the orange vendors in Dakar as a tribute to the formerly 10 % commission that the European company Orange took on every money transfer. In this way, the artist reverses the path of Orange Money in favour of the African street vendors who earn a modest income with their stalls.
The installation Fanta Flirt is an artistic reference to a different version of 'orange juice' and a translucent, arabesque architecture.
Aufleger's Templates are true-to-scale enlargements of templates used in architecture, network planning, telecommunications and other areas of engineering. They form the beginning of a new work series and evoke, as abstract images, descriptions of planetary orbits, secret languages or other attempts to measure and describe the world.