{"id":98187,"date":"2020-04-22T14:18:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T12:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=98187"},"modified":"2020-04-23T18:03:19","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T16:03:19","slug":"jasmin-werner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2020\/04\/22\/jasmin-werner\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia and Neutrality in the work of Jasmin Werner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIt is easy to accept the physical landscape unthinkingly as a neutral background,\u201d wrote Leslie Kanes Weisman in the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women<\/em>. \u201cBut the spatial arrangements of buildings and communities are neither value-free nor neutral; they reflect and reinforce the nature of each society\u2019s gender, race, and class relations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"jasmin
Jasmin Werner, Ambivalent Escalator (Sanssouci)<\/em>. Image courtesy of Kunstverein Braunschweig<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like Kanes Weisman, Jasmin Werner is attentive to the ways our built environment reflects the attitudes, prejudices, and desires of the society in which it is produced. For her inclusion in the group show Mus\u00e9e sentimental de l\u2019ours de Berlin<\/em>, for instance, she used the exhibition\u2019s unusual location, a former bear pit (B\u00e4renzwinger<\/a>) turned project space, as a chance to explore the role nostalgia plays in the changing face of the German capital. Originally built as a sanitation depot, the building, which is located in the central Berlin district of Mitte, was turned into a highly popular public attraction in the late 1930s. The timing was suspicious. \u201cThis was just before the Second World War,\u201d explains Werner, \u201cIt\u2019s likely that it was used as a distraction to calm the people and have them more on their [the National Socialist Party\u2019s] side.\u201d The choice of bears also seems calculated; the animal has been Berlin\u2019s unofficial mascot since it first appeared on the city\u2019s seal in 1280.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the origin story of the B\u00e4renzwinger has been largely forgotten, it remains an emotional place for many Berliners. Invited to produce a project for this location, Werner, who grew up just outside Berlin, took these memories into account. \u201cKnowing it from my childhood,\u201d she says, \u201cI really liked the idea of creating a public sculpture that could communicate with the people who lived there.\u201d To do so, Werner tied the story of the B\u00e4renzwinger with that of another evocative historical structure that she remembered from her youth, the Palast der Republik. Home to the parliament of the German Democratic Republic from 1976 to 1990, after the fall of the wall the Palast der Republik was demolished to make way for a replica of the Stadtschloss, a 15th century Prussian palace that used to sit on the same site but was badly damaged during the war. Somewhat ironically considering the retrograde nature of the project, the steel from the destroyed building was used in the construction of Dubai\u2019s Burj Khalifa, which is currently the world\u2019s tallest building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"jasmin\"
Jasmin Werner, Schloss der Republik Burj Khalifa (segment 1\/4)<\/em>, scaffolding, printed mesh fencing, plastic foil, zip ties, 460 x 100 x 100 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not only the citizens of Berlin who gain comfort from looking backwards. During preparation for her solo exhibition at Brussels-based gallery Damien and the Love Guru<\/a>, Werner discovered many instances of Fa\u00e7adism\u2014an architectural practice in which the fa\u00e7ade of a historical building is preserved but a contemporary structure is built behind it\u2014in the Belgium capital. Playing on the fact that \u201cfacade\u201d comes from the French \u201cfa\u00e7ade\u201d or face, for the resulting show, Werner printed instances of fa\u00e7adism in Brussels, London, Frankfurt and New York onto masks that she made from the kind of dust sheet used in construction sites. As with the rebuilding of the Stadtschloss, for Werner, this tendency suggests an unrealistic attachment to the past. She explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sceptical of the concept of taking out one point in history and making a Disney version out of it that we then have to live in. Things have changed. Women are now able to work and vote, both of which were not possible in the time of the original Stadtschloss, for example. People tend to forget when they glorify certain elements of the past that it wasn’t a good time for everyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"werner\"
Jasmin Werner, Fa\u00e7adomy<\/em>, installation view at Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels, April 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels. Documentation \/ Photography by GRAYSC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The popularity of these projects among citizens is also suggestive of the desire for a more conservative mode of living, which is a topic that Werner referenced more explicitly in the solo exhibition \u2018unkrautfrei,\u2019 at Berlin-based project space Salon Stuttgart<\/a>. For the show, Werner made a series of collages based on the product catalogue of Manufactum, a German retailer of high quality home and garden goods. Using the tagline \u201cEs gibt sie noch, die guten Dingen\u201d (the good things, they still exist), Manufactum trades in nostalgic fantasies of a time when household products were hand crafted from sustainable \u201cnatural\u201d materials and lasted for life. But there\u2019s a dark side to this nostalgic quest to return to \u201cdie guten Dingen\u201d; the company\u2019s founder also founded a publishing house that sells far-right literature, much of which espouses anti-feminist and anti-immigrant sentiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"jasmin
Jasmin Werner, Piped Icing: The interior of an inn<\/em>, 2019, Latex, Adriaen Brouwer catalogue images, Manufactum catalogue images, piped glue and pigment, 36 x 26 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Salon Stuttgart, Berlin. Photography by Nick Ash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alongside these collages, Werner showed two sculptures (Totalherbizid<\/em> I<\/em> and II<\/em>) comprising small metal ploughs that she \u201cdecorated\u201d with piped icing made of glue. A technique taken from baking, the sculptures are a subtle nod to the so-called \u201ccupcake feminist\u201d who insists that the choice to return to the kitchen is her own. Where does the nostalgia for the past come from, Werner asks, and who is it serving? In \u2018unkrautfrei\u2019, as in the rest of her recent practice, she reminds us that neither architecture nor design is neutral. Whether a monument or a wooden spoon, each object that makes up our built environment reflects the beliefs of those who fund, design, produce and distribute it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"jasmin
Jasmin Werner, Totalherbizid II<\/em> (detail), 2019, Harrow, piped glue and pigments, 82 x 67 x 18 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Salon Stuttgart, Berlin. Photography by Nick Ash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chloe Stead is a writer, critic and editor based in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All quotes attributed to the artist are taken from a series of conversations in April 2020, unless otherwise stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more about artists and architecture nostalgia, check our “At the Show with the Artist” articles with Slavs & Tatars<\/a> and Jan Domicz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emerging artist Jasmin Werner exposes biases in architecture and design, showing that nostalgia is more than mere contemplation of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1793],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-to-be-discovered"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}