Cone of Power

Lara Schnitger is an Contemporary artist, Born in the Netherlands Living and working in Los Angeles. She explores the vast possibilities of textiles through painting, sculpture, video, performance and costuming. Her latest project ‘Suffragette City’ ( a sculptural protest procession) has been travailing all over the world.
Her work is featured in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA ; MOMA, New York ; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles ; LACMA, Los Angeles ; MOCA, Los Angeles ; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA ; DZ Bank Kunstsammlung, Frankfurt, Germany ; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Rheims, France ; KW, Berlin, Germany ; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL ; Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL ; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands, among others.

Her film work started in 1995 with' The Best of ' a short video where the artist appears revealing something of the incessant coming and going of sculptural inventions on her face and body. These informal videos last no longer then a minute, stringed together like a pearl necklace full of humor and surprise.

Followed up in the same veine by' Goose Bumps' 1996 and 'Soul Sucker' with music by Sonic Youth / jim o’ Rourke 1998. The video’s where shown in museums and Galleries and are in multiple international museum collections.

In 2008 Lara Schnitger invited My Barbarian ( a Los Angeles based collaborative theatrical group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade) to perform her song 'The Only One'. This song was first written by Triers ( Lara Schnitger) but for the video transformed by Malik Gaines into a love song based on a conceptual system. The film 'The Only One' was shot in the screening room of Liberace’s old house in the Hollywood hills. Inspired by a soft porn Japanese photo novel, lycra fetish websites and sculptural actions, My barbarian performs as sculptures, as audience and shadows. They merge the fabric from their costumes into sculpture, into architecture without losing the erotic and sensitive feeling of these soft sculptures and their own skin.
The short film was featured in Dance Witches Dance, an exhibition in Het Domein, Sittard, the Netherlands and in the Luckman Gallery, Los Angeles, USA

In 2012 Lara collaborated again with My Barbarian in a short film ‘The Butterfly’s Evil Spell' Playing between the dramatic spaces of fantasy and realism, the piece uses a fragmentary Symbolist theater text from 1920 by Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, entitled El Maleficio de La Mariposa, with a cast of talking insects, it tells the story of a mother beetle whose son is "going to be a poet" against her wishes.
The artists perform these scenes in the video, wearing masks and elaborate sculptural costumes. that become sculptures in the installation. 'The Butterfly's Evil Spell' draws parallels between feminist and queer political identities while locating the space for making these connections in the ludic realm of play.

In 2018 Lara made 'Burden Halved' a short dance film in collaboration with choreographer Kitty Mc Namee and musician Flea.
The film traces the journey of four dancers, burdened by the weight of migration, finding comfort when their isolated experiences converge in a lush, emotionally charged exchange.
The Four dancers are struggling to manage their individual burdens. Only when they unite are they freed of the weight they each carry.
'Burden Halved' features wearable sculptures created by Lara Schnitger. The sculptures were created in response to witnessing the current migrant crisis first hand on a recent trip to Europe. Constructed with fabric culled from the lining of vintage suitcases and slim wooden sticks, the packs evoke both physical and emotional rootlessness.
The music is composed and played by Flea (the bas player of the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Flea scored 'Burden Halved' as a solo bass extrapolation. Having Flea's creative response to the visual narrative of the completed picture was a revelation, it completely transformed the film and generated a story imbued with beauty, struggle and ultimately hope.

'Burden Halved' has been screened at: Screendance Festival
Stockholm Sweden, On Art Film Festival Warsaw Poland, Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival, Hollyshorts Film Festival
Hollywood, CA, Skyline Indie Film Fest, Winchester, VA, The Outlet Dance Project, Hamilton, New Jersey, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York ,United Kingdom, Festival Internacional VideoDanzaBA, Buenos Aires, ADF’S Movies By Movers, Durham, NC, among others.