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“A Hierarchal Structure of Identity Norms makes up the Backdrop for a Surface Appearance of Normality in its Idealized Dimensions” Henrik Olesen The large-sized collages by Henrik Olesen present a familiar school situation: students are writing words and sentences onto a blackboard. The unusual aspect is that they are seeking answers about whom they are, and that they are questioning social expectancies: “Who wants what of whom?” or “I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you inform me who I am?” These questions are a response to the persistent social and cultural requirements of establishing one’s identity: “A demand to be identified.” Henrik Olesen, who in his conceptual works, keeps examining the formation and regulation of gender, cultural or political identities, exhibits this situation in front of the blackboard and in school as paradigmatic. It is a situation where the normality of the majority society is to be practiced in its “idealized dimensions” and mistakes in the broadest sense are to be corrected. The school is a place where children are disciplined to be good (heterosexual) citizens: “Nationality Nation state Missionary position.” The problems of a society are also being negotiated in symbolic way here – for example, the controversy about head scarves or the discussions over who is responsible for “Pisa”. On the other hand, “school” symbolizes any situation where people are expected to conform to normality. It is a hierarchical relation in which the majority of society determines the identity of the others. The collages, which as prints with a clear separation of text and image, rather resemble posters or even painted blackboards, are not of least a statement against this power of definition. Artist, born 1967, lives and works in Berlin. |
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