Heide Hinrichs

Is a Semibody half a body? Heide Hinrichs’ sculpture Semibody [Semikörper] (2013) is also made from simple materials available anywhere. A blank piece of white fabric forms the center, from which everything else unfolds. On one side are cardboard boxes containing human sensory organs. On the other side, a drawing of a pair of hands placed on top of one another is projected onto another box. Between this
lies a cloth, unto which feathers are placed. Not a fully formed body, so perhaps half a body? The body also acts like architecture; the piece of cloth invites the viewer to imagine how it feels to lie down under- neath it, to stretch it out or to form a tent. Hinrichs’ relationship with text and im- age is closely linked to what makes up bodily memory – the tactile being realized through contact. Again and again materials appear as an everyday object, so easily reformed, making new spaces, which bear textile characteristics such as cooling, warming, separating and uniting. How can memories be appropriated, how can one write about them at all? Time and time again, the literary debate regarding who can transmit which forms of memory plays a significant role in her work. How can people, bodies and places find their equivalent in description? These questions are fundamental to Hinrich’s investigation of the body-space-language triad. Semibody reveals no clues as to the specific elements that accompany or complete the body. The feathers draw precisely upon what is not defined or formulated, allowing the emergence of new space, within each space.