LIFE CHANCES and OTHER WORK

Mari Mahr

'One of the very great artists of recent years.' – The Financial Times

Chilean-born, Hungarian photographer Mari Mahr looks back over an impressive career spanning 40 years. This first major retrospective of her work to be shown in Berlin celebrates her unique avant-garde vision of experimental photography. Ever central to Mahr’s work is a deeply personal reflection on the consequences of migration and political turmoil, a subject that reflects her own biography. While Mahr’s parents fled Europe to Chile at the start of the Second World War, she herself was subsequently uprooted from her homeland when the family returned to Hungary.
Through poetic assemblages and staged scenes, in series such as Life Chances, The Dreamers Birthday, and New Places, New Codes – Tales of an Expatriate, Mahr uses her photographs – which are often to be understood as intimate conversations with family members she loves or admires – to reflect on the existential struggles, decisions, and paths chosen by members of her family.