Zoom – When identity is reflected
When the identity is reflected
Men’s legs in tights, wrinkled décolletés, scratch marks on the back: Anne Morgenstern shows bodies that deviate from the norm in Geneva.
A crevice in the rock, a pair of shimmering underpants. An overtrained woman’s body, a broken shutter. A heavy curtain, a butt strapped in plastic. Where does the body end and where does the texture begin? Isn’t a body always also a landscape?
Anne Morgenstern dedicated her first major solo exhibition «Indocile and tender» (in German: «tender and indomitable») at the Center de la Photographie in Geneva to the body and identity.
Morgenstern was born in Leipzig in 1976, she removed photography in Zurich, where she lives and works today (including for the «Tages-Anzeiger»).
Skin, desire, hair, beauty, scratch marks on the back, lust, men’s legs in pantyhose, shame, a wrinkled décolleté, pride, bodies between the sexes: Morgenstern succeeds in depicting people who do not conform to the social norm without turning them into a to force new category. “Your work is very liberating and emancipatory,” says curator Danaé Panchaud about Morgenstern. “Indocile and tender” is Panchaud’s first exhibition at the Center de la Photographie in Geneva, until recently she directed the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel.
In parallel with the exhibition, Morgenstern published her book “Macht Liebe”, in which she combines portraits of people with pictures of interiors, animals, fabrics or furniture, as if all things in this world were communicating with one another. The mirror plays an important role in this. Morgenstern prefaced her book with a quote from the German writer Monika Rinck: “Reflect me beyond recognition, give me back in pieces.”
Exhibition Anne Morgenstern: «Indocile and tender», Center de la Photographie in Geneva, until April 10, 2022
Xymna Angel is a culture editor and likes art in unusual places. She studied media studies, art history and German studies.
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