Artist: Laura Schawelka

With “Disclosure”, Laura Schawelka is showing her fifth solo exhibition at FILIALE. Her works are based on documentary images taken in 2014 at the “Glamourcon” in Long Beach, California, the 57th and last edition of the fan convention for glamour and playboy models.

Laura Schawelka's interest lies in the fetishization of the photographic transaction: the models do not sell their bodies, but (physical) images of them, which were often created years or even decades before. In her exhibition, Laura Schawelka uses photos, sculptures and video to explore the complicity of photography in the consumerization of (female) bodies, the detachment through reproduction – from the body to the fetishized object/photo, and the question of whether this can also be a kind of liberation.

Laura Schawelka studied under Tobias Rehberger at the Städelschule and completed her Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia near Los Angeles. In addition to residencies in Paris and Vienna, she was awarded the Q21 viennacontemporary prize in 2019. In 2021 she received the research scholarship of the Berlin Senate and in 2022 the Artist-in-Residence CCA Andratx scholarship. She lives and works in Berlin.