Museum & exhibitions
Culture

Chairs & sisterhood

Pink for women? Whisky for men? Not if Anna Aagaard Jensen has anything to do with it. Her chairs, tables, lamps and vases are designed to question gender stereotypes and expose role patterns. Her exhibition Welcome home, darling features five rooms, furnished with her own work and objects from the collection of the Centraal Museum. ‘As a woman, I too can enjoy drinking and smoking.’

You might very well have seen her work last year in the Centraal Museum. Her strange, intriguing chair called A Basic Instinct caused shock waves in the Statement Chairs exhibition. Written in gigantic letters on the floor next to this pale pink piece of furniture was a caption stating that only women were allowed to sit in it. This didn’t go down well with some visitors. Inspired by the film of the same name, in which Sharon Stone completely dumbfounds her male interrogators by giving them a glimpse of her vulva, A Basic Instinct by Anna Aagaard Jensen pushes the user’s thighs far apart. You’re suddenly sitting in a position that you (as a non-masc, or non-masculine reader) have learned is ‘not nice’ in public. But then you realise that sitting with your legs spread is actually quite comfortable. Anna’s chairs (aptly named Ladies) are a social comment on the phenomenon of manspreading – the urge felt by some men to take up as much space as possible in public transport, for example, or the cinema or sauna. The artist wants her series to allow women the freedom to share this experience. ‘But I don’t think I’ve ever designed anything without having a female user in mind.’

Chicken on a pedestal

For Welcome home, darling, the exhibition in the Centraal Museum, Anna furnished five modern stylised rooms. ‘I usually design everyday object with a twist. That’s what I wanted to do here, so I created cosy rooms that everyone can identify with: a dining room, a study, a living room, a bedroom and a garden.’ The oldest part of the Centraal Museum is in the 15th-century Agnieten convent, which used to be a place exclusively for nuns. Anna designed the rooms with this history in mind. ‘The furnishing gives the impression that two or more women are living in the rooms. You could assume a sexual relationship, or just sisterhood, the close, intimate type of friendship that can develop between women.’
Jensen studied furniture design in her home country of Denmark, before attaining a Master’s degree in Contextual Design in Eindhoven. Her work is on the cutting edge of art and design. In much the same way as A Basic Instinct, her latest exhibition can be viewed from a conceptual angle, but also features an obvious element of design. ‘It doesn’t really require much explanation. The chair is just a chair, the table is a table. And yes, there’s a chicken on a pedestal,’ she admits drily. In the garden, there is indeed a small chicken which appears to be hatching an egg on a pedestal. ‘You’ll see elements of absurdity throughout the exhibition. I think details like this are hilarious, although admittedly, I do have a weird sense of humour.’

Nude portraits

In the exhibition, Anna’s own work is interspersed with objects and art that she’s taken from the museum collection. ‘I chose a few typically “masculine” objects, such as whisky glasses and ashtrays, which were traditionally made for men.’ She wants to, as it were, liberate these objects from their gender-specific connotation. ‘I put them within the feminine context of the exhibition. Not as a power move or to emphasise my own masculinity, but to stress that as a woman, I too can enjoy drinking and smoking.’ The walls in the bedroom are hung with portraits of nude women from the collection of the Centraal Museum. ‘Some were painted by female artists, but the majority were done by men’ Anna explains. The paintings are hung unusually high, just above the visitors’ heads. ‘This has been done on purpose, so that the women in the paintings are look down on us. They are looking at us, not the other way round.’ Anna sees each portrait as a woman with her own personality and character. ‘The paintings are hung in a way that allows the women to see each other and form a friendship. I really wanted the bedroom to be totally devoid of masculinity or eroticism. The women here can just be, on their own terms, with their own identities.’

> from 19 October, Centraal Museum  centraalmuseum.nl

 

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