Lucas Odahara

How would you describe your artistic practice and your experience as an artist in Berlin?

My artistic practice has brought me close to incredible people. People with whom I share and learn modes of resistance, joy, caring and strength. I try to guide myself and my work along these lines. Fortunately I have found people like this here in Berlin and we keep each other going. You know that proverb about raising a child and a village? It definitely takes a whole city to make an artist.

In what ways does your studio / place of work influence the way you work? 

I once heard the musician Tom Zé saying in an interview that whatever he finds in his studio the moment he comes in, it transforms him. That if his studio is full of water, he becomes a salamander. I often think of that before leaving my bed in the morning.

What does it mean for you to exhibit at Die Möglichkeit einer Insel and how do you relate to it as an exhibition space?

I’m very interested in the location where Die Möglichkeit einer Insel is. Next to the water, to the islands in the spree in the city center, to several embassies. Last winter I have made a work in this same neighborhood, at the Bärenzwinger (the former bear pit in Berlin). The work departed from an anecdote from the neighbourhood, as it was one of the locations that Adolf Brand, the founder of the first published German gay periodical called Der Eigene, met with his peers. With his ideas of body purity, Brand was also sympathising with the Nazis, so the work I made dealt with this kind of difficult gay male history. I’m bringing this work also to Die Möglichkeit einer Insel, as it somehow belongs to this area. It interests me in general to think of history and memory in terms of the spatial locations they manifest. As a matter of fact, the only other times I have visited this part of town was to come to the Brazilian embassy to vote, which is one block away from Die Möglichkeit einer Insel. So I guess that for me both historical pasts and political futures of different geographies meet here in this Kiez.

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Photo Credits: Lucas Odahara, courtesy the artist.