one year - one photo

“figure for the base of a crucifixion # 22”, self-portrait, photograph, sizes vary, 2020.

Excerpt from the Journal of Culture interview “2020”:

Journal of Culture (JoC):

You produced your work for 2020 with the subtitle "One Year – One Photo". Clearly referential connections to the previous year can be made out. We can gladly go into details: the armband, the collar, the nipple pasties...

Susanne

I had the idea for this figure back in March 2020 already. Back then, I was lucky enough to get hold of one of these virus protection suits on the Internet. I finally took the photo on 30th December 2020.

To get back to the start of our conversation: what there is to see on this figure moved me. The horrible coronavirus illustration that covers my nipple needed to be placed precisely there so that the photo is able to be seen on social media, and remains able to be seen there. I don't believe in adding bars, asterisks or heart pictograms to parts of my works where my top half is bare in the places that the censorship bodies of social media classify as disreputable, and then purge the photo.

For me, "Black Lives Matter", along with COVID, is the topic of 2020, which is represented by a BLM collar. This symbolises the repeatedly suppressed cry of "I can't breathe” by George Floyd, who was murdered through being choked by a police officer on 25th May 2020 in Minneapolis.

The armband shows the sharp, red lightening bolt of the Polish movement #strajkkobiet, which campaigns for the essential right of legal and safe abortion in Poland and opposed the conservative government there with massive nationwide protests in 2020. And, of course, the figure is wearing a mask and holding a smartphone. That's 2020 for me. But what is it that the character is looking at? At us? Is she looking in a mirror? What do you think?

JoC:

When I saw the picture for the first time, the thought of a nun instantaneously occurred to me, probably because of the strong black and white parts in the picture and the general, self-respectful demeanour of a female figure. The nudity, on the other hand, and the careful reduction of the pictorial media made me think of images of saints, of pictures of the Virgin Mary. The figure looks out into the world, reproachful, taking on everything, alone and drawn.

This work bundles a huge amount of things and makes a universal statement that is independent of the series' past precisely through this past. For the first time, it leaves the feminist concerns behind, but does not forget them. In addition to all the references to the present, the aspect of femininity is central in this work as a supporting element. It's real; it's pure, authentic and strong. I think people should also take a look at your biography. If I may chat away, and please complete the picture: you originally come from a small village in beautiful, conservative Bavaria. You were very young when you managed to escape that very landscape – and you did so with the dream of all too many young girls – as a fashion-model. The experiences that follow on here and that have contributed over the years to filling this pool of resources for the cliché of the role of women are also decisive for your view, for your concerns, for your self- reflectiveness. In an utterly contemporary fashion, we find hashtags above this conversation – and one of them is #agingwithstyle. It's provocative, but also appropriate.

Susanne:
I'm the age I am! Full stop!

The "dream job" of a fashion-model, which I took up very early on, catapulted me from my small Bavarian village directly to New York, then to Milan, and, finally, to Paris. All in a nine-month period. I was just 17, with a secondary school diploma in my pocket. Success came quickly. Then dry spells. Then I worked in Japan. There I started to work artistically myself. I switched sides of the camera and went from being an object to being the author of my own sensitivity and image. This happened in the 1990s. Maybe it was precisely my down-to-earth childhood in Bavaria that protected me in the oh-so-glamorous world of fashion. I was the "buzzkill" at the fashion parties when it came to "cuddling up" to the disgusting friends of the owner of the model agency. I refused! By the way, he is currently in custody awaiting trial at the age of 75 for the rape of minors. At last!

It was only #metoo that first made me realise how many shitty experiences I had "suppressed" from these years: that constantly being touched and sexual harassment was not "normal", and never will be. My generation of women still thought, "It's unpleasant, but that's just how it is"! Yet, I was paralysed with this uneasy discomfort in my gut, because nobody would have believed me, or they looked away from the start. Women too! And that was brimming over in many professions. It was not only in the fashion industry that there were silent accomplices.

The fact that I was once a coerced, competitive product on two legs has shaped me forever, and I still draw from that today. Over the years, my self-portraits have helped me to explore and stabilise my identity and thereby learn to love myself.

JoC:

Art not only should do things – it primarily wants to do things. To present a work these days that involves the word "crucifixion" is heavy weight.

Susanne:

The "crucifixion" defines the violently frozen and immobile as the eschaton, a feeling that is omnipresent.

Yes, the figure makes you think of images of the Virgin Mary. For centuries, Mary has been explaining the world to women. She and she alone conceived and gave birth to the Saviour of the world. Admiring this phenomenon and following it with infinite adoration, woman had only the true, logical course of action: to give birth to a son honourably and raise him to be a better man, so that he himself becomes a better father for many subsequent fathers. As Fran Lebowitz remarked shortly after "#metoo": "Being a woman was exactly the same from Eve 'til eight months ago."*

JoC:

That's why I don't see any ostensible feminist concern in this work. For me, this statement, or the attitude that can be derived from it, is quite simply "a need of today" – an absolutely contemporary need!

Susanne

My figure is not blasphemy. It is a contemporary version of a Mary. Depicted as childless, in an ageing and slowly decaying body. Aesthetically drastically different from how we know Mary to be, it suffers our present world, shaped by racism, contagious diseases, misogyny and control-driven, modern people and their technology. And at the same time, the figure of Mary is also a kind of pop icon. In any case, it will be irreparable in this issue of the Journal.

To read the full interview, please click HERE: