© Uli Aigner
This exhibition was presented as part of the Austrian Cultural Forum’s visual arts programme organised by Anthony Auerbach. This show was part of the season Vienna-Berlin-London: the traits of creativity 1918 – 1938. Uli Aigner made work specifically for the Freud Museum, her intention was to address the site both as museum and house, greeting Sigmund and Anna Freud as people as well as the thinkers who helped define the idea of the family in the twentieth century. She described the project as ‘making visible conversations which I fancy to have had with the Freuds’. She made 4 pieces for the Museum, perhaps her most engaging and audacious piece Enemy Contact, consisted of placing mirrors in the hallway. This produced a remarkable effect which unfortunately did not impress the London Borough of Camden Health and Safety officers who considered that the cracked mirrors posed a risk to health and safety. They required that the mirrors be removed. The artist requested that the mirrors be preserved for re-installation elsewhere, and they were re-installed at the Austrian Cultural Forum at Rutland Gate.
© Uli Aigner
As the Austrian Newsletter observed: “Uli Aigner’s interventions at the Freud Museum address the site both as a museum and as a house, greeting Sigmund and Anna as people as well as the thinkers who helped to define the idea of the family in the twentieth century. She has described the project as ‘making visible conversations which I fancy to have had with the Freud’s.’ Uli Aigner’s work explores ‘being at home’ and ‘being displaced’, becoming oneself and becoming something else (perhaps a tree, a piece of furniture, a reflection), through masking and unmasking, clothing and disclosing. She makes work that responds specifically to an environment, using sculpture, installation, video, performance and photography as each context suggests.”