The politics of looking: 12 gestures from an archive (XX); The politics of looking: 12 gestures from an archive (XY)
Andersdotter, Sara (2022) The politics of looking: 12 gestures from an archive (XX); The politics of looking: 12 gestures from an archive (XY). [Exhibition/show]
The Politics of Looking: Gestures From an Archive responds to a collection of thousands of photographs that I inherited from my grandfather, which arrived from my native Sweden during the second lock-down of 2020. The archive represents a century of family life, events, gatherings and relations from the points of view of two male figures: my great grandfather and my grandfather. This gendered perspective became apparent as I started to sift through and organise these photographs; there is a recurring thread here, of men presenting themselves to themselves, men documenting their spaces and activities, men looking at women, men imagining what women ‘do’. By looking closely at these photographs (and my grandfather’s occasional handwritten note on the back), one can see that many are staged, choreographed, arranged, and organised by their creator.
The works reflect the mechanisms of a male family archive, as well as my engagements with it as a female artist (and now owner of the collection). The works consist of a selection of cropped photographs from the archive, arranged in two corresponding grids of gendered hand positions and body language. Together, they speak of histories of power relations, and the use images and collections in performing, establishing and upholding such power relations.
The photographs in The politics of looking: 12 gestures from an archive (XX) depict women’s hands; a configuration of 12 nurturing, fertile, obedient gestures of muliebrous perfection. The corresponding work, The politics of looking: 12 gestures from an archive (XY), presents a selection of photographs of men’s hands and poses; a contrasting theatre of 12 potent, paternal, virile and authoritative gestures.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1856-9679
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