Dark chocolate, molded and subjected to heat. Performed intervention and video documentation.
Chocolate ,a sensitive material, becomes the core of her practice. Not as ornament, but as a living, emotional surface.
YOURS is born from a body that tests, fails, and observes. Fragments of that body are molded in chocolate: a material charged with memory, desire, and contradiction. Working with these fragments becomes a performative and reparative act — touching, shaping, and exposing parts of oneself, rewriting them in another state of matter.
The sun, initially considered an agent to melt these forms, becomes an intermittent ally. Hamburg offers no certainties: its light comes and goes. The attempt to replace the natural with the artificial raises new questions. The outcome is unexpected: the chocolate doesn’t always melt; in some molds, it burns, it carbonizes.
Thus, a new conceptual axis emerges: the artificial does not imitate it transforms. And that transformation, though disruptive, also builds meaning. Error, accident, and the unexpected are embraced as part of the process.
The work becomes an exploration of time and climates —both internal and external— that shape the experience of living and creating in another country. Yours deals with vulnerability and desire, with the exposure of the body, its fragmentation, and its possible recomposition.. The piece speaks of the transformation of matter —and of the body— over time, through its interaction with a specific territory and its climate.
Johanna Borchardt (b. 1979) is a Buenos Aires–based visual artist whose work explores the intersection of visual arts, movement, and media. She holds a degree in Visual Arts from the National University of the Arts (UNA) and is the founder of PAR, an international art residency focused on performance (@par.residence). Alongside her academic background, she is a certified yoga teacher and has pursued extensive training in contemporary dance and performance.
Her work has been supported by numerous awards and residencies, including Vorwerk Stiftung (Germany, 2025), Raro Barcelona (Spain, 2024), No Lugar (Ecuador, 2023), and the Itaú Visual Arts Award (2023, 2012). She was also awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts (Argentina) and the Caixaforum Media Library (Spain). Borchardt continues to develop interdisciplinary projects that integrate body practices with visual and time-based media.