In her artistic work, Louise Guerra explored the theory, history, and practice of collectivity. On the one hand, she was a fictional artist who appropriated the thoughts, styles, theories, methods, and biographies of others in order to examine them and discuss them in a novel way, and on the other hand, she was a collective that appeared in public with exhibitions, publications, performances, and other manifestations from 2013 to 2017. Louise Guerra is a figure whose practice references other figures from various historical eras such as Louise Michel, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, Louise Glück, Louise Mack, and Louise Lawler, with whom she shares her first name, and in doing so has attempted to become active in various fields of action. In her studio she initially focused on painting and authorship, but it soon became apparent that Louise Guerra’s interests required a new artistic methodology and practice that also included aesthetic theory, everyday life, politics, and education. A forerunner whose collective identity inspired Louise Guerra at that time was the ready- made artist Claire Fontaine. In Chapter 16 of her work, for example, Louise Guerra explored what community could mean beyond shared working spaces and digital communities. Based on Robes Poèmes by Sonia Delaunay and Jacques Damase, which were published as a book, Louise Guerra designed two dresses for her Louise collective that allow the wearers to experience both closeness and dependency, as two people have to share one dress.

The Louise Collective at the Amden Atelier comprised four people, who, wearing two dresses, spent two days at the Amden Atelier, modelling a sculpture, drawing and painting together. Louise Guerra leaves it unresolved whether the Louise Collective at the Amden Atelier is a fiction brought to life or a fiction of life. One of the two dresses and the sculpture were exhibited at the Amden Atelier until 2017.

– Roman Kurzmeyer