Clara Carvajal (* 1970), the second scholarship holder of the 27th IAP Retreat, is a guest of the city of Weimar from June to September 2021. In her work The Displaced Hive: for a biology of images 2, she will use mass tourism on Mount Everest and the emptiness of cities and classic tourist attractions caused by Covid-19 to investigate how traditional cultural concepts can change so much today, up to they embody the opposite of their original meaning. She considers why we “feel the loneliness in the urban desert … more easily than that on the desolate summit of a mountain”. This phenomenon inspired Carvajal to artistically show the overcrowding of these very remote places with simultaneous emptying and neglect of the relevant tourist centres and to reflect this reversal in her works. She plans to show same images in various media and techniques: as a photograph, as a woodcut and print. This concept, she calls it The Biology of Image, is intended to underline the power and impact of the chosen medium.
