Katja Mater

Katja Mater – HIC . EST . TUUM . HORA, 2024

• Diegemstraat 1, Vilvoorde
• Karting, Budasteenweg 2, Machelen
• Emmanuellaan 9, Machelen
• Vaartdijk 36, Brussel
• Fobrux, Vilvoorde

Time flies. Time binds. Time heals.
Time is killed. Time is money. Time will tell.
Make Time. Waste Time. Due Time.

One perspective on Time defines it as a measure of change. In this view, clocks serve to track changes, visually representing the progression of seconds, days, or even seasons and years. The use of the sun for timekeeping dates back to prehistory. Sundials typically consist of a flat surface, known as the dial, and a gnomon, an object that casts a shadow onto the dial. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow aligns with different markings on the dial, enabling interpretation of its position.

Katja Mater’s work consists of five single-hour markings placed throughout Buda, transforming the area into a (part of a) large-scale sundial. Each part uses a number that was already present, giving it the additional task of telling (summer) time. At 9:00 in the morning, the shadow of the street sign indicating 9 km to Brussels, located at the intersection of Schaarbeeklei and Diegemstraat, meets a marking on the wall. Simultaneously, a shadow is cast on the red house number at Emmanuellaan 9. At 13:00, we can observe a shadow on the large number 1 on the facade of Diegemstraat 1. At 14:00, a shadow falls on the numeral 2 to the right of the entrance of the First Kart-Inn, and at 16:00, another one appears on a graffiti-marked IIII on a wall next to the canal at Vaartdijk. The title or motto of Mater’s sundial, HIC . EST . TUUM . HORA (HERE . IS . YOUR . HOUR) serves as both a reminder and an offering to a passerby.

This work was created with the support of Hendrik Hollander.

About

Katja Mater’s (°1979, NL) practice focuses on the parameters of photography and film from a meta-perspective, using them as non-transparent media. By creating hybrids between different optical media, installation, and performance, Mater documents something that is often positioned beyond our human ability to see. Interested in revealing a different or alternative (experience of) reality through capturing the areas where optical media hardly behave like the human eye, Mater mediates between time, space, perception, and our understanding of them; recording events that simultaneously can and cannot be – holding midway between information and interpretation.
Next to a solo practice as a visual artist, Mater is involved in different collaborative projects, as editor of Girls Like Us Magazine since 2014 and as one of the founding members of Mothers & Daughters, a Lesbian* and Trans* Bar. Katja Mater is represented by LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina/Paris.