Opening: 5 July, 7pm
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Badischer Kunstverein Waldstraße 3 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany |
Marianne Wex "Female" and "Male" Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures ("Weibliche" und "männliche" Körpersprache als Folge patriarchalischer Machtverhältnisse) Badischer Kunstverein presents Marianne Wex in her first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany since the 1970s. From 1972 to 1977 Wex photographed people and their body language on the streets of Hamburg and subsequently classified her photos into different categories. She juxtaposed women and men according to the specific positioning of arms and legs, feet, knees, elbows, hands, shoulders, and heads. She was interested in the degree to which gender-specific conditioning and hierarchy are reflected through everyday poses and gestures. In order to expand her research, Wex supplemented the approximately 5000 photographs taken in public spaces with rephotographed pictures from mass-media sources and statuary from antiquity and the Middle Ages. Marianne Wex's vast work of photographic taxonomy is at once conceptual and documentary, personal and polemical. It elucidates a specific approach to the medium of photography and to the appropriation of found image material. At the same time, her work has its roots in the feminist movement of the 1970s, with the collaged photo panels having been shown for the first time in 1977 as part of the exhibition "Women Artists International 1877–1977" at NGBK in Berlin. Co-curated by Mike Sperlinger, London. The display structure has been developed in cooperation with artist Ruth Buchanan and architect Andreas Müller. With special thanks to the archive bildwechsel, Hamburg, www.bildwechsel.org. Marianne Wex (b. 1937 in Hamburg) lives and works in Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany. | ||
