Augusta Atla, Objet de femmes, 2011
Augusta Atla
Objet de femmes

Augusta Atla (*1979, Denmark) works using a variety of visual media that include installation art, performance art, photography, collage, and video art. The influence of theatre, dance, and social anthropology is essential for the body of her work that questions the representation of femininity in Western art history. Her education in art history and theory and her knowledge of painting from the Renaissance, Baroque, the period of realism, and modern times create a basis for her visual reflections on the issue of gender and her criticism of stereotypes.

artist's website: www.augustaatla.com

A table is covered with a white sheet evidently prepared for a celebration. Around the table several women dressed in black begin to appear. Their black garments starkly contrast with the white of the embroidered fabric, the lace, the shawls covering the furniture and the chairs of the room. The women interact with the objects found on the table. They fold up the clothes, hang up fish using rope suspended from the ceiling of the room, remove seeds from a pomegranate on a wooden washboard, hold a doll in their hands. In a revisiting of the pictorial genre of still life, the tools and materials used in the performance are expressed again through the women’s movements and actions taking the gestures of daily life out of context. The traditional roles of women as the ones responsible for family care and home maintenance are critically examined as the representation of the female body breaks with its objectified role in the pictorial image.
Photography: Nikolas Branidis

Courtesy Augusta Atla

Document media
photographs

Issue date
2011

Tags
ritual, femininity, body object relation, nature