Edel­weiß

Mike Parr was born in 1945 in Syd­ney, and grew up on a farm which his par­ents had pur­chased in the Aus­tralian hin­ter­land. Right after his birth the doc­tor ampu­tat­ed the low­er part of Parr’s arm with­out even ask­ing the moth­er. This was nev­er to be dis­cussed in the fam­i­ly, and he was treat­ed as if he had been born with just one arm.

Mike Parr takes his own iden­ti­ty as a start­ing point and unfolds a both con­fronta­tion­al and mys­ti­cal artis­tic lan­guage of the rad­i­cal that revolves around the psy­cho-social dimen­sions of the self and the com­mu­ni­ty, sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and mem­o­ry, the issue of human exis­tence and its con­trol. Mike Parr relies on shock, pain, dis­gust, and taboo to acti­vate the pub­lic and to stim­u­late it to dis­cuss issues of art and ethics.

Curat­ed by Synne Genzmer