Karin steht dazu.
2009



Karin steht dazu.
Kabinett
- "Karin steht dazu." is basically a series of 705 photos -

Haus für Kunst Uri, Altdorf:
Cabinet: wood, cardboard, stickers
Photography: 99 images in carved wooden frames, 4 different sizes
280 x 490 x 80 cm

"Im Schatten der Pyramiden"
"In the shadow of the Pyramids"
Group Exhibition
Contemporary artists from Switzerland in Cairo - 19 interventions
Barbara Zürcher and Bruno Z'Graggen, Curators







"Karin takes a stand.", a cabinet piece, embodies the power of everyday visual culture and aesthetics of Cairo's public space. It is a statement of our position on ornament entirely liberated from its functionalist role and a statement for the vitality of a city that does not follow the western rule of cleaning up urban landscapes.

Our intention during our residency in Cairo was to abolish the ornament as understood by the discourse of western hegemony, so as to remake and redefine it in the contemporary Arab world. The performative nature of the Series indicates that we are not interested in negating or resisting the ornament as such, but rather in revealing the dynamics ensuing as the ornament becomes an image, the precarious relations obtaining between them.

The cabinet provides the visual archive with a physical location. The visual elements on show in the double structure are arrayed perspectivally, creating a pattern-like alloverness against an iridescent, virtually dematerialized background in such a way as to destabilize the viewer's eye-level standpoint.

Thus we challenge the alleged reproducibility of motif and series, addressing the contradictions inherent in the ornamental tradition with our own personal statement: "Karin takes a stand."

Chalet5 2009

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