Georgia Loy Horn on and in “This is Me, This is You”

About “This is Me, This is You” (1997–2000), the art historian Thierry de Duve has written: “The photographs are more landscape than portrait. What the artist has said of Iceland befits the girl: ‘Iceland is always becoming what it will be, and what it will be is not a fixed thing either. So here is Iceland: an act, not an object, a verb, never a noun.’ Georgia Loy is a verb.”

I am Georgia Loy.

I went in search of myself, and Roni Horn caught me looking. She was my unbidden foil, a landscape onto which, against which, and through which I become, a reaction to Roni’s reaction to me.

If I am the “me” in the titular clause “This is Me”, is Roni the “You”? Or, are the me and the you interchangeable? I am seen through Roni’s lens, but is her identity also made visible through me? Is memory integral to the viewer's experience? Time remains slippery, spatial, resisting chronology: which of the doubled photos preceded the other? What changes are perceptible between the two shots? Does it matter? Is there a taxonomy of me, and me? Or me, and you, and Roni?

This discussion will contemplate identity and becoming in the context of “This is Me, This is You” as an exploration of the self and the other, weaving together personal anecdotes with formal analysis.

With Georgia Loy Horn and Curator Monika Bayer-Wermuth

The exhibition "This Is Me, This Is You. The Eva Felten Photography Collection" will be open after the talk until 9 pm.

Georgia Loy Horn is a curator, writer, and private art collection manager based in the United States. Horn began her career at the studio of the Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy, where she built the archive and assisted in exhibition coordination, image rights and reproductions, and production management.

Horn is currently Curator at Large for the Louis M. Martini Winery in Napa, California, where she curated the inaugural installation of the winery’s art program, featuring the permanent, site-specific work “Open Field Poem” by the artist Rosa Barba in 2023. Horn also oversaw installations by Laura Owens and Jonas Wood, among others, as a project manager for the New York-based non-profit organization RxART. In 2017, she was one of five international emerging curators nominated for the VIII Edition of the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’arte. In addition to her project work, Horn also manages private art collections for clients in New York, California, and Florida.

Horn earned her undergraduate degree in Art History from Oberlin College and an M.A. in Modern Art, Critical, and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. Georgia Loy Horn is also the niece of artist Roni Horn and subject of her project “This is Me, This is You” (1997–2000).