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31/5/2012

Daniela Comani

After the butcher, Berlin

With her art project “Daniela Comani’s Top 100 Films” the artist presents one hundred classics of film history as a collection of DVDs and movie posters. The objects are familiar to viewers, like ones we find in videotheks, on billboards, or in movie theater showcases, but Daniela Comani turns our view of things upside-down and questions not only our memory of media images, but also our understanding of gender roles.

​Only on second glance does it become apparent that the 100 film titles of blockbusters and cinema classics have all been altered by switching the gender assignment of the film heroes and heroines. This striking adjustment changes the stories and thus also our attitudes toward the respective movie. For example,Godfather becomes Godmother and Marlon Brando is wearing lipstick! Mon Oncleby Jacques Tati becomes Ma Tante; and The Lord of the Rings is now The Lady of the Rings. Titles such as the following emerge: Queen Kong, All the President’s Women, and The Last Empress. The collection of titles can be expanded ad infinitum, including numerous references to Berlin.

This conceptual reversal challenges viewers to a mental turnaround, forcing them to rethink traditional perspectives. The artist is both precise and subtle in her aesthetic transformations, recasting the graphic design accordingly, so that at first no difference is noticed. The lasting impact is thus all the more powerful. Gender discourse is a standard component of Daniela Comani’s work, in which she focuses on questioning female and male roles. Her approach is at the same time a cultural excursion, as she implements the film titles in a number of languages and variations, aesthetically adapting the presentations.

​This approach can also be seen in earlier series by the artist. “New Publications edited by Daniela Comani” was devoted to the medium of the printed book, in which she revised the titles and existing book covers to create new images and statements. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea became The Old Woman and the Sea and, taking the reversal a step further, Melville’s Moby Dick becameMoby Pussy. Every cultural sphere has its language, a different picture on the cover, a different preference, and readers remember the book in a certain way. Daniela Comani offers her clear response to this. In her staged photo series A Happy Marriage, Comani took on the issue of gender role-playing, entering the pictures herself to play both the male and the female roles. By portraying both spouses in everyday poses she put her great histrionic and chameleon-like abilities to the test. In all of her works, Daniela Comani challenges viewers to take an ironic look at themselves.

Text by Renata Stih, Berlin 2012

Opening June 1st, 7 pm

After the butcher
Spittastrasse 25 - Berlin
open by appointment: +49(0)179-9473040

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