Eleanor Antin (b. 1935, USA)
Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972

K21, Düsseldorf, Germany / Visited 21/01/2020

This work is relevant for me – on a higher abstraction level than its direct subject matter – for a number of reasons.

I am struggling with perceived compulsion to always interpret artworks in the context of their making, including the biography and motivation of the artist. Here is a work that might be granted an exemption from my objection – with artist using her own body as artistic medium, seemingly being driven by her own experiences of that particular body and her projections of social norms onto it. And yet, those particular motivations interest me the least – I am much more excited about the idea of “sculpting the body”, interpretation of the daily routine in terms of classical artistry, as well as complex media mix – body regarded as sculpture presented as series of photographs titled as sculpture…

So for my practice this is interesting in terms of interchangeability of media and the tension between artist as maker and her product at the same time. This resonates with my experimentation with media interchangeability (e.g. non-cochlear sound, digital presentations of physical works etc) and some performative work using my own body.