Twelve sun loungers are split in two in „50:50“. LENA MARIE EMRICH’s sculptural intervention traces rupture and repetition, leisure and loss. The form holds, as idleness mutates and function slips. The body, quietly omitted.
In collaboration with Eivissa-based filmmaker, producer, and SAFA founder IVA FISCHER CVJETKOVIĆ, Emrich traced the afterlife of deserted tourist furniture. Navigating through economic decline amid the discarded infrastructure of seasonal leisure. Inside the former water tank of SAFA, Emrich presents 50:50, a new sculptural work composed of twelve discarded sun loungers. Each lounger has been cut precisely in half and arranged with unhurried precision. – What remains when leisure ends?
LA ZAMBUDILLA unfolds in quiet tension — part shade, part threat. Since 2022, Eivissa has banned colorful parasols from its beaches — a conservation measure to protect native bird species disturbed by vivid designs. The unintended result: thousands of discarded umbrellas now considered waste on an island with limited recycling infrastructure. In collaboration with Eivissa-based filmmaker, producer, and SAFA founder IVA FISCHER CVJETKOVIC, Emrich traced the afterlife of these objects. At the core of their research are interviews with beach vendors, family-run businesses, and individuals navigating economic decline amid the discarded infrastructure of seasonal leisure. A number of outlawed umbrellas were sourced from storage facilities near one of the island’s iconic beaches.
These found materials were transformed into new iterations of LA ZAMBUDILLA — weathered, melancholic umbrellas intersected by steel-like extensions. In this context, the parasol becomes a soft weapon: it evokes the strange territoriality of tourism, where temporary visitors lay claim to space. At the same time, the series reflects on the slow violence of the tourist economy — its impact on ecosystems, aesthetics, and local structures.
LENA MARIE EMRICH is a sculptor working between Belgium and Germany. Her practice moves fluidly between conceptual research and material precision, often merging sculptural form with fragmentary poetics. Emrich investigates the social and aesthetic roles of rigid objects — upgrading them through minimal, yet pointed transformations. Collaboration plays a central role in her process, as does an ongoing interest in systems of value, protection, and presence.
Her work has been shown at Import Export Gallery, Warsaw (2025), Office Impart, Berlin (2024), DS Gallery, Paris (2024), Kunsthalle Osnabrück (2019), Kunstverein Göttingen (2020), Kunstraum LLC, New York (2018), and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2021), among others.
In 2020, she received the Berlin Masters Award and in 2021/2022 the Art Prize of Kunstverein Hannover. In 2023, she was awarded the Neustart Kultur grant by Stiftung Kunstfonds to realize the project The Darkest Corners in collaboration with Marlene A. Schenk.
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