Barbara Rose Haum

Barbara Rose Haum is a German born artist who has been living and working in New York City since the 1980s. Her work emphasizes the performative aspect of language by examining how values are constructed through text, and more specifically through the ritualistic repetition of words.

Barbara Haum's work attempts to transform traditional readings of texts through intertwining of contemporary narratives found in newspaper clippings with fairy tales, myths and the bible. Integral to her research is the struggle to decentralize the authority of the text and to express a desire to bring "nourishment" to language in order to open up the text to gendered and cross-cultural experiences. Her installations are clusters of ordinary objects such as spoons, ink wells, goose feathers, soap dishes and spooIs of thread in combination with newspaper clippings, cookbooks, photographs of the Torah. These elements coexist in an open field with no boundaries, thus inviting viewers to question their meaning and purpose and allowing for new meanings to emerge.