In Maria Hahnenkamp’s colorphotographs sewn together the process of the making of the picture literally involves cutting a hole in the photograph by cutting the face of the woman out of it, only her hair left. She cuts out a representation and the stitches on a re-formed, stitched together representation on what’s left of the original photograph. What’s stitched on functions as a patch. Hahnenkamp uses the patch as a metaphor of the Lacanian object. For that object is understood in the theory both as a hole in the signifying chain and as that which covers the hole. By creating the object, the patch, she lays bare the hole beneath.
Silvia Eiblmayr
Published in: “Suture – Phantasmen der Vollkommenheit”, Salzburger Kunstverein (editor), 1994
Silvia Eiblmayr, lives and works in Vienna. phd. in art history, curator in the field of contemporary art. From 1998-2008 director of Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, 1993-1995 director of Salzburger Kunstverein. 1988-2013 lecturer and guest professor in Austria and abroad. Author and editor of numerous art related texts and publications. Book: “Woman as Picture“ – The Female Body in 20th Century Art, Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 1993/2003.
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