Working at the intersection of art, movement and sensory perception, multidisciplinary artist Katrin Schnabl presented EWNS, a 25-metre installation, at the 4th Larnaca Biennale. In this interview, she reflects on the ideas behind her work, her experience of Larnaca and the Biennale’s unique Mediterranean setting.
Featured image credit:Sean Sutherland
Who is artist Katrin Schnabl? Share with us a few things about you and your work in general.
I practice across visual art, sculpture, fashion, dance, performance and installation, fusing movement and conceptual investigation through pattern. I work with sheer tinted mesh fabrics, stitching color fields into membranes that connect back unto themselves, then fold, to create both depth, and, through blending, a refraction of color as a way of mixing paint. These membranes act as filters, allowing tracing, and sensory detection. I am intrigued by mathematics, neuroscience, meta/ physics, and their mystical connection. As a trained dancer I study how the human body with all its senses is equipped as an extraordinary decoder of gross and subtle stimuli. A commonality in my work, which is often collaborative and participatory, is its invitation for a full sensory reading, or ‘sense- making’ through moving and exploring its’ dynamic and dimensional potential, instilling the phenomenon of a drawing inside, a wish to step inside the work.
Tell us a few words about your installation ”EWNS”, displayed in Larnaca Municipal Market throughout the Biennale.
EWNS is an acronym for east west north south, the cardinal directions, and an embodied deliberation on balancing one’s right and one’s left sensory inputs.
Built as a triptych, the 25 meter long installation EWNS can form a continuous 8m dia. circle, or be split-open, and experienced stretched open. Conjuring maps and migratory patterns flowing over a spherical form, it is a visual-sensual meditation on the complementary function of our bodies’ mirrored halves: our left and right sides. How do both halves co-operate as one: a side for fielding circular inputs, and a side for cardinal directions, in one body, to allow us to navigate? This tension exists in many of our languages, cultures, and customs as ‘right, rechts, dexia, droit, derecha, etc’ and ‘left, links, aristera, gauche, esquirda, etc’. By inserting a hierarchy between equal halves, what is merely an interpretation as ‘proper’, legal, and now of lesser significance, an imbalance which affects every interaction is established to the detriment of everyBODY.
You have visited Larnaca for your installation procedures. What was your overall impression of Larnaca and Larnaca Biennale?
I came to Larnaca to install the 25 meter long triptych in the beautiful Municipal Market in September 2025. I quickly realized that I had not allowed enough time for my visit to BE here and to absorb the unique historical, geo-political, and cultural constellation of Larnaca. Here is where the Larnaca Biennale steps in to provide an extraordinary opportunity for viewer, visitors and participants alike to experience how we grapple with our station and history with the help and the lens of contemporary art illuminating and augmenting the traverses creatively. I was very impressed with the breadth of artwork submitted and selected, and how it was matched with a broad range of locations, allowing a unique experience of the city. Kudos to the magnificent curation and planning!
A message you would like to send to artists that will apply in the future for participation in the Larnaca Biennale.
I hope you apply! The Larnaca Biennale pulls together past and present, local and international in the unique setting of the Mediterranean where cultures have historically intersected and merged. This produces a remarkably dynamic setting for the Biennale, where art and artists from across the globe came together in a broad dialog. The curation was superb, with the artworks and locations being sensibly matched. Give yourself time when you visit for the installation or opening.