SINGLY WORK AND PRINT
Sanne Kofod Olsen, curator, writer and director of the Funen Academy of Fine Arts in Odense, looks into recurrent aspects or principles in Franke's practice such as man, woman, apple, house and Franke's play with gender roles. The artist introduces each work with a description and personal comments.
by Sanne KOFOD OLSEN
»For our house is our corner of the world«,
Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space, 1958
MAN, WOMAN, APPLE, HOUSE: These appear to be the four fundamental elements in the art of Anja Franke. There is the appearance of the Man and the appearance of the Woman – in the form of Anja Franke herself. Then there is the apparent appearance of the Apple and finally we have the House appearing in its various guises. This all seems very classical, quite elemental in fact. But it is not!
There is the story of the Man. His name is Kaj Aage Drafenharden.
He has died more than once. His death has always been connected to apples. He has been eaten himself as an apple or poisoned by apple-liquid. He is a highly irritating man, always arguing with Franke, forever transgressing the boundaries of her space and her house.
He often ends up dead after one of their confrontations.
There is also the Woman, Anja Franke herself. The woman is a working artist. We see her either in her studio or out in public, sometime in conversation with Kaj Aage, sometimes acting as the invisible host of the artwork.
Then there is the House. The House has various forms: sometimes simple, sometimes labyrinthine. The House does not always appear as an actual house. It may be grids from the house, spaces from the house, the house turned inside-out etc. Many different things are connected to the House. The House is seen as a space.
Then there is the Apple. The Apple may be just an apple or i may be subjectivized. It frequently ends up in the stomach of Franke or of someone else invited to partake in the meal.
MAN, WOMAN, APPLE The outlining of these four elements is merely an attempt at definine some of the fundamental principles of Anja Franke’s work. Franke has been working for over a decade and her artistic project is continuously evolving while always remaining true to the fundamental principles that her work catalyzes into complexity.
Of course there are many obvious references. One might presume to link the Man, Woman and Apple to the classic story of Adam and Eve and The Fall of Man. But in Anja Franke’s untraditional representation it is devoid of any underlying religious narrative purpose. Rather, the objective is to expose the cultural heritage behind the roles of Man and Woman in Western, Judaeo-Christian society: questioning traditional roles as well as obstructing gender stereotypes. Franke appears to be opposing the conventions of a phallogocentric society through this role-play between herself and the fictional character of Kaj Aage: going up against the Western, patriarchal culture which has been criticized and contested by so many feminists over the years, and in many ways still needs to be disputed today.
The male figure of Kaj Aage with whom Franke speaks in various installations is often somewhat obnoxious. The first time he appeared was in the installation »Rotated but Dead Green« in 1996. Anja Franke turned the exhibition space into a maze of white blankets. At the centre of the maze a plastic tub was installed filled with apple-fluid circulated by a pump. At the same time, the air was filled with applescented air freshener. Kaj Aage is searching for something in the maze and soon gets lost. He runs into Franke who tries to give him directions. But he is impatient and rude turning the already absurd conversation into a quarrel. Kaj Aage is obnoxious and Franke is highly irritated. Before long Kaj Aage gets completely lost in the maze and Franke declares that she has to leave, because she is searching for a recipe. At one point Kaj Aage reaches the poisonous apple-fluid and drinks it. It tastes foul and he screams and starts running, completely confused by the maze: he has no sense of direction. Franke starts getting worried and tries to stop him, but in vain. At the end, she loses track of him.
The dreamlike character of the narrative obscures the entire scenario to the point of surrealism. This is an absurd dialogue and action between Man and Woman with apparently fatal results. The gender aspect of the piece centers on the male-female dichotomy and the theme appears to be one of conflict between the sexes. The genderrole distribution between Kaj Aage and Franke is conventional in more ways than one. The motif of Eve – that is of Woman giving Man the fatal Apple – is obvious. The irrationality of Woman and the rationality of Man are aspects characterizing the figures in »Rotated but Dead Green«. At the same time intruders get the feeling that the maze-like house represents the mind of one person and that the clash between male and female is bound up in this person.
The coexistence of male and female in one person is also a theme in the 1998 work »Before and After«. »Before and After« is partly a dialogue with Kaj Aage and partly a bunch of apples. But here the gender stereotypes are inverted: Kaj Aage is defined in a conventionally »feminine« manner as being »irrational and sensitive« whereas Franke herself is the conventional »male« – the rational, logical one. This turn is explained by Franke herself in the following comment: »I try to create a context, in which gender is seen as a cultural construction. By experimenting with language, I am suggesting that gender is not firmly defined, but rather transgresses from one position to another; implying that rather than being constant, it is changing all the time.«
The gender stereotypes appearing in »Rotated but Dead Green« are to be viewed in this light. The unfixity of gender is used in this instance to deconstruct the rationality of subject, space and action.
At the end of the dialogue in »Before and After«, Kaj Aage is turned into an apple and eaten by Franke. Thus one gender is absorbed by the other: a kind of symbolic cannibalism, which was also the theme of Franke’s earlier work »A Meal«, in which she symbolizes herself through the Apple to finally eat herself. The Apple is used metaphorically as either a victim or as something or someone to be absorbed by a person. The eating of the Apple is thus a kind of cannibalistic act in which one Subject absorbs another. When Franke eats Kaj Aage in the shape of an apple, it can be seen as the absorption of one person by their opposite sex, thus unifying male and female in one body. The one absorbed is not traditionally identified as the Woman (i.e. in the role of the victim) and must be understood at a rather complex level. This might be either the relation between man and woman in a somewhat destructive relationship (i.e. the relationship between Anja Franke and Kaj Aage Drafenharden); the conflict between the conventional feminine and the conventional masculine; or the unification of male/female in a single, ambisexual body.
This can be seen in the light of a comment made by the artist and theoretician Mary Kelly on the double-identity of male and female, which she finds typical of many feminist artists of the 1970s. She says; »What I think emerges as a kind of underlying contradiction is that, while the woman sees her experience in terms of the »feminine« position as the object of the look, she also has to deal with the fact that she’s the subject of desire, or that she is, as an artist, in the masculine position as subject of the look. The difficulty she finds in being in those two places at once seems to me to demonstrate through actual practice something about the insistent bisexuality of the drives (…) the point that I am trying to make in general is that the work itself, in spite of what women say about it, demonstrates that masculine and feminine positions are never fixed.«1
This historical conflict outlined by Mary Kelly, seems to be lingering between the conscious and subconscious in the work of Anja Franke.
Franke is of a younger generation than the artists Mary Kelly is referring to, and the struggle against the »artist-as-Man« seems less important. Instead, Franke exposes the struggle between male and female as an inner conflict; demonstrating the unfixed positions of male and female. She positions her subject as woman and artist through this very unfixity demonstrated in her art.
This conclusion concerning the work is based on Franke’s own comments. Kaj Aage is – sometimes obviously – representing something in her: signifying juxtaposed emotions, an inner struggle. There seems to be an emotional conflict between the feminine and the masculine. This may appear destructive in the sense that one of them must be consumed, but at the same time it is highly productive in terms of the creative processes involved in the work.
HOUSE
Another constant feature in Anja Franke’s work is the House.
She often uses her own home, which has been utilized in various ways. The kitchen has been remade and installed in an exhibition space. Her home has been photographed, mirrored and used for wall-paper (in »Living Space«), a miniature version of it has been constructed, and – more recently – her home was turned into the actual exhibition site for the project »instantHERLEV«. In »instantHERLEV« Franke’s home was used for an exhibition, which included her own work as well as works by other artists. Using her house as a starting point, Franke built various constructions/platforms to function as display spaces.
The exhibition also expanded into the public realm beyond her private property. Thus the idea of private vis-à-vis public space was completely obscured by breaking down the distinction between them, or at least private space was turned into public ditto. This can be viewed as a parallel to her definitions of male and female. Again we have the conventional public/private dichotomy, which is also linked to gender stereotypes: The public realm being the traditionally male domain whereas the private sphere is often defined as a female one.
The house/private sphere is frequently associated with Woman because it is a domestic space. This gendered connotation of »house« often not only associates the House – or home – with Woman, but actually parallels it to Woman. Gaston Bachelard even writes about the maternal features of the house. Bachelard sees the house as a domain of intimacy in which the subject feels safe and at home. In this sense it is womblike – and thus female – in character. He sees the house as a psychological shelter as well as a physiological one: a shelter for daydreaming. He writes »the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.«2
Certainly in Anja Franke’s work the House does protect the daydreamer:
Her houses establish inviting situations, encouraging people to participate and relax. The House appears to be a flexible entity, constantly changing and adapting to given situations. A cycle of works: »Free« and »Yellow House with a Hole« deals both with hospitality and with the transformation of everyday life. A small garden shed from Franke’s garden was transported to an exhibition in the southern part of Denmark. The house was put on a truck and taken to the exhibition where it was transformed into the installation »Free« (2002). »Free« was both inside and outside the exhibition. Inside the exhibition was a film of a boy jumping from a roof top as well as a backpack with a survival kit. Outside, the garden house was transformed into a shelter with a sleeping area and a sink. The visitors were invited to inhabit the shelter and stay for as long as they wanted: To be free. The fact that the actual exhibition space was a former military area also contributed
to the work. The military aspect represented discipline, order, obedience, fixity, even danger and death. This shelter-installation represented Franke’s attempt at creating the opposite situation focusing on free will, freedom, nomadic life and safety.
Meanwhile, the transformation of the little garden shed was not yet complete: Two years later, in 2004, the House reappeared in connection with another exhibition at a harbor site in the small historical Danish town of Kerteminde. This time it turned up as »Yellow House with a Hole«. The yellow house was mounted on pillars right on the waterfront.
Unlike the »Free« shelter, this house had room for two. It became a kind of summer shelter and was painted bright yellow in order to maximize visibility. From the outside the House might have looked like a small hut for fishing equipment since this is a harbor used for smallscale fishing, but on entering the shelter, visitors were surprised to find just a mattress and a hole in the middle of the floor with a rope for sliding down into the water: An escape-option to freedom or a chance for a swim? The double meaning lingered in the air, very much in keeping with the generally dualistic character of Franke’s work.
The shelter theme recurs in two other installations. This time the shelter is affiliated with stereotypical Scandinavian motifs. Franke created the installation »Woolhouse« for a 2003 exhibition in Costa Rica. »Woolhouse« was a shelter for one. On the inside, the house was lined with woolly sweaters: typical apparel in the Nordic countries but certainly not in Costa Rica. Before being used to line the shed, the original use of the sweaters was documented: They were worn by six females (including two girls). Thus the interior was constructed as a »feminine space«, referring to the house/shelter as a femaled omain. This was further emphasized not only by the fact that the sweaters had belonged to women but also by the fact that they were knitted – traditional women’s work. Hence the feminine space was constructed through historical references. The sweaters themselves perhaps even symbolized the very act of construction, since knitting is a method of constructing form.
The construction of identity plays a central role in the last installation, which also featured a shelter but constructed as a more transgressive space (one might add that the yellow house with the hole was also a transgressive space). The installation »Scandinavia« was created in 2005 for an exhibition combining visual art and design.
Again, Franke created not only a »female space« but a »female Nordic space«. She constructed a corridor placed at the entrance, thus forcing the audience to pass through it. The corridor was lined with wool fabric featuring prints of a traditional Nordic motif: ice crystals, often seen on sweaters, caps, woolly gloves, etc. At the end a mirror had been installed with sweaters hanging in front of it, allowing spectators to view their own reflections in the corridor. The installation also included a soundtrack of traditional Norwegian, Swedish and Danish sampled music to emphasize the construction and the fiction of a Nordic identity. This was a space of fiction and reflection. The installation even invited the audience to consider their own reflections thus experiencing either familiarity or alienation.
Man, Woman, Apple and House are the fundamental elements used by Anja Franke to indicate the complexity of the fundamental. In her work all stereotypes are deconstructed in a highly complex manner: torn apart, ironically exposed in their obvious insufficiency. Anja Franke showcases stereotypes, deconstructing them in a reflexive process through which unfixity and transgression become the new order of things. A reflexive space is constructed for the viewer to enter with the objective of recovering the construction itself.
Franke’s spaces can be considered simultaneously to be spaces of disturbance and welcoming, hospitable spaces. The duality of her work exists in every part of the elements, inviting contemplation.
From four fundamental principles3 to a crystallized vision of the world we transgress from one end of Anja Franke’s works to the other.
1 From »No Essential Femininity: A Conversation between Mary Kelly and Paul Smith«,
in: Mary Kelly; Imaging Desire, MIT Press, Boston 1996.
2 Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space – The Classic Look at How We Experience
Intimate Places, Beacon Press, Boston 1994 (first published 1958).
3 »Four fundamental principles
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