Laura Lee Mahnke’s practice merges sculpture, text, and performance. She pursues desire-driven, visceral paths of production that translate inner images and affects directly into tangible form. Shaped by her radically leftist yet romantic worldview, she explores the turmoil and longings of human existence and its relationship to the surrounding past and present. She transfers literary techniques such as Écriture Automatique into sculpture, thereby touching on the limits of control and its loss. This results in poetic sculptural abstractions between stone and flesh. Her Pourings are spatial interventions using liquid porcelain.
Mahnke has been studying at the HFBK Hamburg, the École des Beaux Arts et de Design Marseille-Mediterranée, and as a guest at the UdK Berlin. She will complete her Master’s degree in Fine Arts with Kader Attia in 2027. She is a trained ceramist and the mother of one son. Her work was recently exhibited at Westwerk and Galerie Kaufmann, Hamburg, and Vorfluter, Berlin. Recent readings took place at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, and Pickle Bar, Berlin. Her works are held by various private collections. She is a founding member of the feminist curatorial collective Cake&Cash, and participated in numerous publications and podcasts published by, and symposia held by Künstlerhaus Lauenburg, Kunsthaus Hamburg, and Kunstverein in Hamburg. In her own curatorial work, she highlights the work of fellow women artists and creates spaces of encounter. She collaborates with Paula Hoffmann in their artist duo Mahnke/Hoffmann.
For the entire portfolio, details of works, and enquiries please contact: info@lauramahnke.com