About
Henrik Langsdorf is a visual artist and filmmaker who divides his time between New York and Kassel, Germany.
His work ranges from abstract art and collage to time-based media and art in public space.
His current practice is informed by extended stays in Kinshasa and Nairobi and deals with colonial history and human marginalization in urban contexts.
His video installation “Rudolf Duala Manga Bell — a German Story” was presented at ruruhaus, a community space run by documenta fifteen in Kassel as part of Blind Spots in the Sun – a series of art interventions that explores the nexus between colonial history and anti-Black racism in Germany. It was also shown at MARKK Museum in Hamburg, Germany and at Doual’Art in Douala, Cameroon and has won awards at international film festivals.
During documenta fifteen, Langsdorf showed two video installations entitled “5 car stud 2.0 / coordinated inauthentic behavior” and “No First Aid/HAPPYLAND” at Galleria Kollektiva and Hugenottenhaus in Kassel, respectively, both in partnership with documenta fifteen.
“Ville Fantôme/Kinshasa La Belle”, a two-channel video installation that explores human resilience in the face of explosive growth in African megacities was shown at the Congo Biennale.
Recent shows include The Emotional Tapestries of Urban Spaces, a three-person show about the emotional undercurrents in the built environment at PS122 in New York and an auction benefit for Friends Seminary at 52 Walker.
Currently he is working on visuals for a dance performance that deals with the fallout from Africa’s division by European powers in the 19th and early 20th century in the wake of the Berlin Conference of 1884.
Forthcoming are residencies at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs) and at the Library Residency in Athens, Greece.
Artist statement
I work in video, collage, painting, mixed media, and public art. In recent years several currents have emerged. One body of work engages the colonial history of my native Germany and its reverberations in the African diaspora, approached through video installation that focuses on overlooked stories of resistance and how Germany’s self-image as a “civilized” society obscures both historic discourse and post-colonial reckoning. I also work on utopian ideals in architecture and the bleak realities left in their wake, as well as the impact of non-degrading materials in a historic context.
Drawing on sources from the places I’ve lived — architectural fragments from Kinshasa, fungi gathered near my parents’ home in Germany, and plastic waste found in New York — I create collages where structures decay, merge, and regrow. The “Deep Space” series extends this inquiry into an imagined future where architecture, plastic debris and organic forms merge in a post-human world, while the “Plasticenic” series considers how synthetic matter embeds itself into historiography.
Across these bodies of work, I am interested in both the destructive force of human ambition and the resilience that emerges after devastation.