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Johanna Kotlaris: Jessica Jessica Jessica
Edited by Francesca Benini and Taisse Grandi Venturi
Published by Jungle Books, St. Gallen, and MASI Lugano, 2024
In her artistic practice, Johanna Kotlaris invents fictional characters through which she tells stories. These are narratives that explore the complexity of interpersonal relationships and the various energies that arise from them, or the ways in which we resolve conflict or exercise care. She describes the fragile balance of such dynamics as well as the structural social problems that affect our relationships with the self and the outside world. Fictional characters and their stories become projection surfaces through which we can examine and process our own stories.
The publication Jessica Jessica Jessica contains texts that Johanna Kotlaris has written for various contexts over the last six years. She connects texts through a narrative framework that she writes from a fictional first-person perspective. These are letters that she writes to Jessica and that serve, among other things, to link various texts together. Jessica is an empty Instagram profile (0 followers, 0 following, and no posts) that has been meticulously tracking Johanna’s activity on the same platform for some time. Since it is not clear who Jessica is, she becomes a projection screen for ever-changing people. The imaginary relationship with Jessica thus changes in the course of the writing: from curiosity to longing, indifference to discomfort at being constantly observed. At the same time, Johanna Kotlaris confides in Jessica and contextualizes the texts written in the past, newly compiled in this book. The result is a narrative that fluctuates between reality and fiction and continues to reflect on the nature of interpersonal relationships, analyzing, examining, and testing them and thus constantly laying out new orders.
Published in collaboration with MASI Lugano on the occasion of the exhibition Johanna Kotlaris: HUMERE, Manor Art Prize 2024, Ticino
CLIENT
MASI Lugano
LINK
https://www.jungle-books.com/product/johanna-kotlaris-jessica-jessica-jessica/
CREDITS
Design: Samuel Bänziger, Rosario Florio, and Larissa KasperPhotos: Jungle Books