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Katja Bjørn

Everyday Image 2016

Video sculpture, wardrobe, monitor, porcelain, cardboard boxes, textiles, 27:30 min loop, no sound 

The work Everyday Image presents an investigation of body, intimacy and the formal qualities of clothes and textiles. Inside the cupboard a woman is slowly trying on different pieces of clothes, considering how they look and dress her. At the same time she turns in front of the viewer. Even though the woman presents herself in a kind of boudoir room with erotic and voyeuristic connotations, there is nothing sexual about her appearance and movements. Instead she tries new and unknown textiles, which she would have to get used to – an everyday exercise to find the right clothes for the occasion, is given an extra dimension. Midway i the video the woman poors a cup of tea and looks at herself with little interrest. Then she lies down on the shelf to rest for a moment – an element referring to Kirsten Justesen's Portrait in an archive with collection (1913) and Claude Cahun's Self portrait (In Cupboard) (1932) – the woman lying down on 'the right shelf', so to speak, among porcelain and fabric attacking traditional gendered roles. In Bjørn's variant the video is not quite as ready-made as Justesen's or Cahun's, however it draws on the same topics, reinstalling them in a contemporary context. As such Everyday Image invites the viewer to interact with the work, establishing a kind of modern cabinet of curiosity; a new relation between the everyday life and the spectacular.