10 years A Happy Marriage 2003-2013. Comani's photo series questions of who is who, and who is playing whom, in the man/woman constellation.
Daniela Comani’s photo series “Eine glückliche Ehe“ (A Happy Marriage, since 2003) presents the gender position man/woman in dependence on the constellation of the heterosexual couple so perplexingly, that the question of who is who, and who is playing whom, collapses in on itself. The differences of facial expression, gesture, pose and clothing are minimal; after all, in the gender context, it is not the deflection (in a nutshell: drag queen, butch…) that is all too obvious, but the so-called normalities: traveling, car, explaining – male domains; listening, communicating, the ability to be led, devotion – women’s characteristics. In this way the typical male and female is created that Daniela Comani involves in her photographs, first from repetition in profane dealings, in rhetorical signifying and in visual identifying. In no way however, can the repetition be attributed to any biologically given sex, very much on the contrary, repetition produces an excess of regulative function in the stereotype.
(Hanne Loreck, The Imaginary and Visibility, in: The Eighth Square, Gender, Life, and Desire in the visual Arts since 1960, edited by Museum Ludwig, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006)
Kunstverein Tiergarten
Turmstrasse 75, Galerie Nord - Berlin