03/07/2012

Marianne Wex „Weibliche" und „männliche" Körpersprache als Folge patriarchalischer Machtverhältnisse




Opening: 5 July, 7pm
6 July–9 September 2012


Badischer Kunstverein
Waldstraße 3
76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
www.badischer-kunstverein.de


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.