Give Me Paradox or Give Me Death

Give Me Paradox or Give Me Death Synopsis

Working across sculpture, photography, drawing and artist's books, Roni Horn addresses identity, mutability and unease. The title of this book, which accompanies the artist's exhibition of the same name at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, is borrowed from Patrick Henry, a prominent representative of the American independence movement in the eighteenth century who ended a speech with the famous words: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" By replacing liberty with paradox, Horn nods to her interest in the reconciliation of two contradictory answers, an important aspect in her work, which also relates to her use of doubling or pairs.

A seminal example of this is This is Me, This is You (1997-2000), photographs of the artist's niece taken over a two-year period during her adolescence and presented on two opposite walls, or a.k.a. (2008-09), which captures the artist at different moments throughout her life. The catalogue presents the more than 100 works in the exhibition, including drawings from the late 1970s that have never been shown before, as well as a selection of pigment drawings made between 1983 and 2018.