Nora Aurrekoetxea interview | Rijksakademie Open Studios

Nora Aurrekoetxea’s work encourages contemplation of the way we are physically and mentally conditioned by the forms we inhabit. The floor of her studio at Rijksakademie is flecked with metal moulds she has made of (and left inside) the holes one would normally expect to be covered. Dominating the room are two wooden bifurcated staircases – replicating the one in the house she has been living in during her residency – both rotated by 90 degrees, one placed on the floor, the other hung on the wall. By disrupting the body’s naturalised inclination to adapt to stairs, Aurrekoetxea’s uncanny distortion is suggestive of “falling”, with all its psychological and metaphorical connotations. Interview by TOM DENMAN Filmed and edited by MARTIN KENNEDY