Marijke van Warmerdam, advisor and mentor at the Ateliers in Amsterdam, presents Claudia Sola [NL 1974]. Sola studied at the Ateliers and the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and Cooper Union in New York. From 1994 until 1996, she was the assistant of photographer and filmmaker Johan van der Keuken.

‘To what extent can you give chaos form in your work, without destroying the chaos by giving it form? This question often reappears in the video works of Claudia Sola. She is constantly searching for new ways to place daily happenings into a universal context. This leads to works with strong political intention or results in a personal document, both reflecting the way we are: egos revolving in a social constellation. What interests me in her work is how she and the world revolve together.’ [Marijke van Warmerdam, Amsterdam, 2006]

Just like Van Warmerdam, Claudia Sola uses images from daily life. In contrast to Van Warmerdam, who introduces singular staged images, Sola takes on the multiplicity and complexity of different worlds - the world inside and outside itself. In her video installations Sola uses collected documentation as well as self-shot footage, written text and sound, which constantly change roles.

The title of Sola’s exhibition ‘stone soup’ comes from the well-known folktale that appears in various versions all over the world. The main theme of the tale is about something that seems insignificant, but in the end proves to be valuable. Sola uses this tale as a metaphor for her exhibition at outLINE. How one can concoct a rich soup from a simple stone? When one has a stone as a basis, ‘being hungry’ would seem unnecessary.