Museumsportal Berlin

To date, Glasgow based artist Ilana Halperin's practice has spanned the geological and cultural landscape of volcanoes, earthquakes and caves. Scrutinising our understanding of geological time and the formation of new landmass, she has conducted field studies in Hawaii, Iceland, France, and China and has worked with geologists and archaeologists in scientific institutions such as the Global Volcanism Programme, the British Geological Survey, and Earthwatch Institute.

In an innovative turn, Halperin now directs her artistic perspective to the interior of the human and animal body and the landmasses found therein: gall, kidney and urinary bladder stones, as well as calcified vessels and organs. In taking this route she is treading a path laid out by 18th century "body mineralogists". For instance, the Berlin anatomist Johann Gottlieb Walter and his son Friedrich August Walter collected and examined numerous body stones, bridging the antique concept of humoral pathology with practices of modern experimental chemistry. Today these "Walter" stones form the basis of the collections in the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité. Studying these collections and presenting them in juxtaposition with objects from other museum collections - principally the Berlin Museum of Natural History - the artist explores narratives of "time", "flow", "process", and "new landmass". Steine presents Halperin's etchings, wood block prints, water colours, film, and sculptures created in Icelandic geothermal springs and the limestone caves of St Nazair in France in a creative engagement with the relationships between geologic formations in natural surroundings and the human and animal body.